5 Simple Things You Can Do to Save Time on Your Wedding Day

After photographing weddings for several years now, I’ve been able to pick up a few tips on things that you can do now so your wedding day goes smoothly. I’ve found that the most common cause of stress on the day itself is running late. Creating a realistic wedding timeline obviously helps. Sticking to the timeline though can sometimes may be easier said than done.

Here are a few small things you should keep in mind to help you stick to your timeline.

1.) Send your wedding itinerary to all members of your wedding party and your families.

A wedding itinerary falls apart when one portion of the day gets botched. And usually, that happens on the first portion of the day —- the Getting Ready part. One thing you can do to keep you on schedule is to email your itinerary to everyone. When everyone involved knows that you’ve sent them the itinerary, that makes them accountable. Meaning, they won’t (or shouldn’t) have an excuse for being late.

Sometimes you’ll have people who are always going to be late no matter what (they’re your friends/family, you’ll know who they are), that sending an email will not be enough. You’ll need to review with them verbally what’s expected of them. And maybe give them a fighting chance to be on-time. For example, you have a friend who’s always 30 minutes late. If they should be done by let’s say 10:30, tell them they should be done by 10 am. You can’t expect them to be punctual on your wedding day when they’ve always been tardy every day of the year.

2.) If you have a lace-up wedding dress, pre-lace it the day before.

Lacing your dress could take 10-15 minutes depending on how intricate it is. Twenty minutes if your friends don’t know how to do it properly. Instead of spending that time standing in front of the mirror watching the clock tick (and getting stressed out if you’re already late), you should pre-lace your dress the day before. Just make sure it’s still wide enough for you to get in. The only thing you’ll need to do on your wedding day is to step into your dress, and get your friends to tighten it.

3.) Iron and pre-fold the groom and groomsmen’s pocket squares.

I can’t count how many times I’ve documented the men getting ready and watch them try to figure out what to do with their pocket squares. Unless they’ve been at a wedding before or wear pocket squares all the time, most men have no clue. I’ve seen them spend time on You Tube agreeing on the style of fold they’d want to use. And once they have that figured, they’d realize that they’d need to iron the squares first. So we’re looking at about 10-20 minutes just on pocket squares alone.

To make it easier for the guys, have them decide on the style of pocket square fold they want. Get one of the groomsmen to consult with their suit provider and ask for a tutorial on how to fold the squares if they’re still not sure. Iron the pocket squares the night before, fold it, and place it in the pockets so they’re ready to go the next day.

4.) Choose a photography location for your portraits that does not involve a lot of walking.

I’m pretty fit so I have no problem walking. It only becomes an issue when we only have 40 minutes for portraits and we spend 10 minutes walking to a particular location for photos and another 10 minutes walking back. And because photographers carry about 20 pounds of gear on us on the day, please don’t expect us to be as quick on our feet. Just saying.

5.) Find out any potential traffic issues and inform your guests and vendors about it a few days before your wedding.

You can’t always predict what traffic is going to look like any day of the week. But you can find out beforehand about any road construction or road closures and let your guests and vendors know about it so they can plan their routes accordingly. Now that Google Maps include traffic information on their app, this should not be much of an issue anymore, but those who are not familiar with it might need extra help.

Hope these little tidbits information are of help to you! Please let me know your thoughts on the Comment section below.