As a wedding photographer you become involved with helping brides a lot when things go wrong before the big day! So what has gone wrong so far in my time as a wedding photographer?
Here is my quick top 10 mistakes that i’ve seen happen multiple times and how you can prevent them.
Some minor planning will help prevent a few of these
1 – Not knowing about wedding insurance.
Yes! Wedding insurance is a thing – protect your investment – it covers delays/cancellations due to ill health, suppliers going bust, and many other disasters and it only costs £60-£70! Your wedding is an investment and it needs protecting.
If your venue goes under then so does your money (And in 2024 i have seen it happen to 3 of my couples already!)
www.wedinsure.co.uk is a good place to start!
2 – Under estimating the registrars availability
Firstly, booking the registrar is your job, not the venue! let’s make that clear. Before you book your venue you need to check availability from the registrars that cover the area where you are getting married. For peak summer Saturdays in summer anything up to 18 months before hand may have limited availability, so before you commit to your date check the registrar is free. (Or you could end up with a 4pm ceremony if that’s all they have left)
3 -Timings & schedules
More often than not some weddings are not well though out timings wise and the day feels like a bit of a drag for the guests or just manic and rushed.
So what are the usual pitfalls?
Not enough time for drinks and photos or the opposite….far too much time between ceremony and food(1h 45 is a good amount),too much of a gap between wedding breakfast and first dance.
Here is a sample schedule to help your timings.
12pm Ceremony (30 mins)
12:30 Drinks reception (1H:45)
2:15 – Sit down guests(15 Minutes)
2:30 – Speeches(30 Minutes is usually ample)
3:00 – Food (2H30 for food for a 3 course meal)
5:30 – Room turnaround and guest mingle (Good time to slot in a magician or more photos!)
7:00 – First dance
8:30/9 – Evening buffet.
4 – Making sure your bridal party know they are there to serve a purpose
This is going to sound quite diva! but i see it far to often – Bridesmaids/Groomsmen who think there job is just to attend in a suit/dress – Give them a few jobs to do!
Helping with the dress
Holding your drinks during couple photos so you can enjoy it a little more
Helping round up the family.
5 – Saying Hi to everyone!
This is a huge downer for most couples, feeling guilty they didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone.
During the food use the “bit between courses” to do a bit of a hop around each table and say hello to people –
Make sure your drinks reception time is at least 1h 45 – it gives you 45 minutes for photo’s and a full hour of going around and saying hello to people.
6 – Trying to action pack the day
I see many couples worried there guests will get bored during the food, during downtime, and start worrying about what to do.
Your guests are able to entertain them selves, i’m not saying don’t book some singing waiters or magicians but dont do it for the sole purpose of trying to pack every minute of the day with something.
I’ve yet to see a wedding where the guests are not enjoying them selves without additional entertainment.
7 – Table plans
Don’t print your table plans till the last minute! or make them in a way that is easily interchangeable.
Guests will drop out no doubt, maybe 1, maybe 6 – but there is always some last minute drop outs that cause the added cost of having to get stuff re-printed.
8 – Don’t over spend on evening food
So let’s say you have 80 day guests, and 40 more evening guests. Don’t go paying for 120 evening meals..
If your food is served after 5pm there is a good chance most your day guests won’t even eat much of the evening food and evening guests are (i’m sorry to say) very rarely all likely to attend. The majority of weddings i’m lucky to see more than 50% of evening guests show up particularly if the venue is far away from your home location.
So always under estimate your evening food and save some pennies!
The venue doesn’t actually care if 200 people show up for your evening but you wrote down 100, all they do is cater for the numbers you gave them.
