If you’re planning a wedding or know of someone that is planning a wedding, chances are you are trying to navigate the waters of the wedding industry, which can be a difficult challenge.

Well, today on the blog, we want to share 3 easy wedding secrets that will greatly help improve the wedding day experience and in turn, make a wedding photographers life a lot easier too.

Make a Name/Face list

One of the best things a couple can do for a wedding photographer before the wedding is creating a document with everyone’s first names and photos. This does a couple of things for us wedding professionals.

First, it puts a name with a face beforehand so we know who all the players are at the wedding.

Knowing who’s who and being able to put a name with a face makes it easier for us to build repour and to communicate better with everyone as well.

Simply put their name, who they are on the wedding day, and their photo. Sharing it with all the vendors will make things go so much smoother when we arrive on the wedding day!

The list can be very simple as shown above, it doesn’t need to be great, just make it print it or email it to the vendors and parties involved so everyone knows who everyone else will be.

Make a Photo list with Specific Names

While many wedding photographers will make generic lists of images to get for the day, you can take things a step further and make a specific list with those names.

What this does for the wedding photographer is call out names instead of titles.

It makes it more direct when trying to rush through and grab the right shots needed for the wedding day.

We recommend that you take the list the pro gives you and rewrite it. Here’s a couple of examples.

• From: “Bride with Parents” to “Bride with Cindy and Gregory”

• From: “Bride, Groom with Sister” to “Bride with Jason and Suzan”

• From: “Wedding Groom and Groomsman” to “Jason with Steve, Franklin, Ted, and Michael”

We did a recent study of this online and found that roughly 2% of couples did this compared to 98% of them made everything generic.

Communicate, Lots

The BEST thing we can tell you is to communicate with your wedding vendors as much as you can.

No, you won’t seem needy or pushy, the more information that we have before and during the day, the better everyone can do their jobs and better your wedding day will be.

We can usually tell those weddings that will be hard to work and those that will be easy based on the communication, the documents back and forth, and of course how much you talk with us during the wedding day.

The BEST way to communicate is to have a wedding planner or coordinator for the day, someone that can make things go smoothly going from one piece of the wedding to another, talk with vendors about needing to change things on the timeline if need be, to communicate with you guys about what will need to happen next and when and so forth.

Carole and I recently did a last-minute wedding where we didn’t know what to expect, luckily, the couple had a friend help plan and run the wedding, that was great because that person also happened to be a former bride of ours roughly 5 years ago.

That made a world of difference having her, a timeline, images of what the bride would like to try and do as well as a list of images to take.

Final Thoughts

Communication is key to a great, smooth wedding.

The more information that you can communicate to vendors, the bridal party, and guests, the better you will be with regards to mistakes at the wedding or how we professionals can cover them up so they’re not seen, to begin with.