Planning your wedding
In the last years photographing weddings I saw a few common things happen or fail to happen (depending on how you look at it).
Planning a huge wedding gets tedious, stressfull and at the very best it is a huge burden on you and on your close family. Some may not agree fully with me but from what I constantly see happening, I came to the conclusion that handing over the day to a good wedding planner is one of the best things to do. True, you may tell me that it is an extra cost for nothing, but to be honest, if you just hand over the day to a wedding planner with a preset list/plan, there is only little where they can assist you with. You would already have wasted so much time in getting everything planned and stressed so much on it that then there would be barely any work left on the actual day for the planner to do.
Whereas if you start from way before giving a list and ideas to the planner and work it with him/her from day 1 (or day 2,3… ) like that the planner knows exactly what you wish for and how it should happen. This way on the wedding day itself, you can just relax and enjoy your day while your planner is taking care of all the rest.
Some decide to leave the happening of the day in the hands of their family members and some are able to handle it well but others not so much – infact some might end up over worked and issues start to crop up and specially relationships get scarred. I have seen family members fighting and scolding each other on weddings… Big fights sometimes! Sometimes non of this happens but many times this is reality and unfortunately you end up seeing many brides fighting with parents and siblings on a day which should be nothing more than happiness.
An advise I give to everyone: do not try to over do it with details. Keep it simple and remeber that you NEED to enjoy your wedding too. Trying to fit in a lot of details and events in a limited 4-5hour wedding is a recipe for disaster – you will end up not enjoying anything… So many brides and grooms tell me after the wedding that they barely ate anything and that they barely enjoyed their wedding…
One common thing I see happening, couples see beautiful images on the internet of weddings and immagine the same for their wedding, yet they do not manage to get the same feeling in their wedding… The biggest issue with this – and which is almost always the same – lighting!! Weddings happen in huge external spaces at night, most of the times, venues are simply not well lit, they mostly have accent lighting whose’s job is simply to accenuate architectural features. It might look nice to the eye but definitely not the right light fir your photos or videos. Lighting the venue is the trick. Even simple slightly dense fairy lights will do the trick, specially around the dance floor… If not, adding flood lights or lamp posts around the venue will definitely be better than nothing. Sometimes we get to venues with yhese odern LED colour changing lights spread around – this is a nightmare as in photos and videos, people will look all sorts of colours other than their natural colour! Do give importance to lighting. A mediocre venue with great light will look more beutiful than the most beautiful venue and beautifully decorated but with low level and sparse lighting.
Many times I see couples spending loads of cash on details and the “in thing” to do and then end up with no time to actually enjoy thier wedding and ending up not having more cash left to pay for proper documentation of their wedding… Indirectly, this also leads you to poor photos or poor videos because no money is left for this and you end up going to the cheapest option (instead of lookong for the artist with the vision which clearly or mostly matches what you have in mind for your wedding – not all photographers and videographers have the same style and definitely not the same level of skill to be able to represent the wedding yhe way you immagined it. And the worst part is that these are the only things that will remain from the whole wedding… The only thing you will have to remind you of the wedding. So it definitely not a thing to skimp upon if you want to have beautiful wedding memories…
This leads me to the few final thoughts… Be realistic, do not over do it with details and events. You have really limited time to enjoy all of this. Make sure you ENJOY YOUR WEDDING, your guests will enjoy it instead if you. Your wedding is fornyoubto enjoy and your guests to enjoy it WITH you (amd not FOR YOU). STOP watching pinterest for ideas and planning to have a wedding planned to the last details! There is only so much you can plan, let natural emotions happen, let real natural moments happen! Yes, sure, decorate your venue, and make it look beautiful, but do not waste all your time in doing this, you need to have time to build your relationship as a couple as well as your relationship with your family in the last months leading to the wedding and not creating stress and arguments in trying to manage all this work in time. DO MAKE SURE to give proper attention to lighting your venue. Speak with your photographer or videographer so they assist you on this. And lastly, do give importance to the photographer and videographer as they will give you the service of eternal memories of a day that will vanish in a snap.
Happy wedding planning!!