PLANNING YOUR INTINERARY, SCHEDULE, OR WEDDING CALENDAR
Our time is so important and valuable as your time, out time costs as yours and when you are planning a wedding you need to consider the next suggestions:
- Time frame for bride and groom’s Getting ready is around 20-40 minutes with groom, 1 to 1 ½ , ceremony last around 20 minutes for regular weddings, there are some out there that last 1 hour, excluding Indian/Hindu ceremonies, we need around 20-30 minutes for group shoots after the wedding ceremony, then 1 to 2 hours are just fine for the couple and the photographer, then 3 hours for a reception are enough time for get everything you need only if you plan very well all the reception stages.
- If you and all the wedding guest arrives more than one day before the wedding day, usually they all party up, so when the wedding takes place usually the guests are wear out, so if possible make them arrive one day before or 2 and then after the wedding keep party up, for dancing and enjoying shoots during the reception this is a good point of consideration.
- Do not let dead time during the wedding day, we are conscious that some old people need to take some time and rest, but for all others it became slow and sometimes boring, it is like when you are having a good time dancing and suddenly they play an ugly or slow song all guest go and sit down instead keep dancing and drinking.
CEREMONY HOUR AND LIGHTING CONSIDERATIONS.
We have shoot in every single hour during the day during every single month year around but you make consider some advice to plan better your wedding lighting:
- For better pictures, talking about lighting conditions, make sure the wedding reception time is around 2 hours before the sunset, if you want bright sky, you need no casting shadows on the venue location from near buildings, palm trees, etc. a nice fabric over the couple in the venue place will help to get better lighting over the couple but it may not be needed if the sun lighting fills the couple face without making any shadow.
- Some shoots during a no controlled situation during the day, like ceremony, may have a washed out sky, depending on the angle, lens, hour day and month and season, this is about wedding photographer style not about wedding photographer skills, you may want to check some top wedding photographer’s galleries and you can assure what I mean in this point.
- Any wedding light conditions will not be the same like other unless it is carried out in the same place, same hour, same moth, same persons, every single wedding is different, every wedding people act different, think on what you want.
WEDDING MAKE UP ARTIST
Form the bide point of view, the make up artist is one of the most pre wedding point,
- Usually brides goes to the resort spa, big mistake, they are not cheap but cheaper than a real full time make up artist, the result in contrast is huge, better art, better material, long lasting make up and the care of its own owner, most of the situations if not all, an employee just do the job but the owner always keep improving it, creating, innovating and trying to insolate from others by showing the added value and looking for what makes them unique.
- Brides thinks the photographer solves everything in Photoshop, second big mistake, we all charge for that and it depends on what the bride wants, of curse we all as a photographer do our best possible to make you beautiful, more than you already are, but paying to a photographer what you do not like is more expensive that you think.
- Editing price may be included or not in the photography service, if this is included you need to make sure exactly what does enhance, touch up, edit or whatever name you read out there will include or means in your wedding photography service.
If you are one of my brides ask me about make up artists, I know a couple of amazing artists around here if they are not listed here also.
VENUE, CEREMONY, RECEPTION BEAUTY LOCATIONS
I have some good points about some undesired things I have seen during my 5 years shooting weddings.
- Again Photoshop is not the solution, is one expensive alternative all the brides have, if you are paying some big amount of bucks, money, cash, checks, wire transfer or whatever it is call for a payment, it is your right to ask the hotel or wedding coordinator to hide or remove in a beautiful way wedding stuff or things around the place, like speakers, near chairs, place lighting, it is not limited to what I say, also you should be aware of DJ stuff, speaker and lighting in the reception, ceremony, gazebo or venue location.
- Do not pay that expensive location and then pay for fixing complex edition, remember must of the photographers are based on photojournalism style during Bride and Groom getting ready, wedding ceremony and Reception, during the Bride and Groom photo shoot we can control the situation in a better way, we can avoid thing and also plan for erase thing in Photoshop, but working on this is not easy and takes a lot of time depending the situation.
- Take the best from the hotel and the wedding coordinator; they know really well the business.
Wedding DJ AND ITS LIGHTING
The DJ is something really important, most of the weddings with DJ’s and lighting are great for pictures, everybody dance, and those bunch of colors makes pictures amazing, we can create the light but more colorful gives life to the reception party!
- Make sure you got a good DJ, reliable, updated and popular!
- Make sure they have nice lighting, nice lighted dance floor and be sure to pay for it if possible, again we can do great things and the pictures will turn out as environment accurate as possible.
WEDDING VIDEOGRAPHERS
Many of tem are good work team cooperative, some other are just employees and made the photography and the video itself hard to get the good one, we recommend and suggest good videographers in the area, for this point or comments to consider are:
- Hire only recommended wedding videographers by your wedding photographer.
- Resort or hotel videographer are employees, most of them are obtrusive and do not care about photography when we are outside vendors, so please think about it, we can have a good skill but in a 20 minutes ceremony or maybe an hour ceremony it is not easy to communicate during it, if the videographer has not enough vision and visual communication some great shoot may be missed.
- There are many venues or ceremony location that are really small, the photographer usually goes with a second shooter to get more during those 20 minutes, having 3 people inside the place plus the minister, I do not want to count amateur photographers that are guest because in some way they are part of the wedding celebration, priest or whatever person is leading the ceremony makes everything more complicates, more if there is no cooperation at all from the videographer.
Again, it is possible to work with them but it depends on the persona and company and usually there is no chance or time to setup a good strategy between Video and photogh.
