When you start planning a wedding, you can be inundated with wedding advice. Everyone wants to tell you how they did things, or this really cool thing they saw one time, or something crazy they saw online but you should definitely. not. do. The weight of tradition can hit like a ton of bricks and I remember how overwhelming it all felt. But I also remember my older sister being so helpful – her wedding was a few weeks before I got engaged. And getting to benefit from her fresh experience was huge.
I think recently-married couples have the best advice to give when it comes to planning a wedding, that’s why I’ve been asking my couples for years “what’s the best advice you’d give to recently-engaged couples?” So I’m sharing their advice here, to help you plan for a wedding and images you’ll cherish.
1. Be Clear on Your Priorities
“Decide what is important to you and structure the rest of the things around that. We valued spending meaningful time with our closest friends and family in our hometown, great food, and an awesome dance party. Things like flowers and décor (while they turned out to be gorgeous) were less crucial to us than making sure our closest friends and family had an incredible time. That meant that we were able to shift attention and funds to a few things rather than everything across the board. We loved the personal, special ceremony from a dear family friend, walking the streets of the town where we met and grew up with our friends en route to the yacht club, and seeing people from various parts of our life bond over oysters and 80s music. Our photos completely reflect this too – we love the literally 100s of shots of people laughing, crying, and hugging.” – Leslie & Rich
2. Do Your Research
“My advice is to do your research. I must’ve looked at at least 50 photographers in my search for the right photographer. All that time, we learned what we liked and disliked… Look for someone’s art that truly speaks to you, and whose photos maybe even brings tears to your eyes. Then you know you’ve found the right one!” – Tara & Luke
3. Trust Your Vendors
“We both learned to put a lot more trust in our vendors; after all, you are the professionals! It’s easy to forget that sometimes.” Iva & Andrew
4. Do an Engagement Session
“Definitely book an engagement or practice session. Eddie and I don’t love to be the center of attention. And, consequently, we don’t have a ton of photos of ourselves. Doing an engagement session gave us an idea of what to do and not to do. And Kelly made us look so good that we were excited to get in front of the camera again on the wedding day.” – Meg & Eddie
5. Make a Plan
“It all goes along with the 7 Ps (Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.) I admittedly was overstressed in the weeks leading up to the wedding, but once things were in place, it was easy just to let it all unfold. And watching my PoPo dance with JP’s dad made EVERYTHING worth it. (Oh, and being married to this dude, too, of course.)” – Jeni & JP
6. Consider a First Look
“In retrospect, I (Melissa) wish that we had been more open to having formal photos taken before the ceremony. We both resisted it, but I felt like it would have given us more time with our guests after actually experiencing how fast the day went by. We were really happy with ours, but there is a reason people advise you to do them before the ceremony and it’s one of the few things I would do differently if we did it again.” – Melissa & Ben
7. Plan ahead for photos.
“I would say really think about the timing of your photos when you plan your wedding timeline” – Caitlyn & Chad
8. Know things will go wrong.
“Expect things not to go entirely as planned! And prepare yourself to be OK with that :)” – Jane & Ike
9. Be present. Be grateful.
“Most importantly, be present on your wedding day. Take time to appreciate what’s going on around you; to be grateful for the people you talk to and the moments you’re a part of throughout the day; to celebrate just you and your beloved; and to be fully a part of the celebration. It’s a wonderful, singular, and profound moment.” – Nick & Chelley
