Tips for Planning Your First Look at your Wedding.

If you plan to have a first look at your wedding, you may be wondering when you should be dressed and ready to go. This is an important scheduling point to have ready for your hair and make-up people so they know when they need to wrap up their work.

Here is a question that I get fairly often from couples who are planning to have a first look at their wedding:

We're starting to try and figure out our day of timeline for the wedding. What do you recommend for photos? We want to attend cocktail hour ourselves, not do photos then, but most timelines online recommend doing some or all of the photos during that slot. 

We're definitely into the idea of candid photos as much as possible but will want some posed family photos to make the parents and relatives happy. We want to do a first look as well but that can be more candid rather than super posed. Let me know what you think!

I recommend having your first look 2-3 hours before your wedding ceremony. This gives me enough time to get through portraits of you, your bridal party and your family before the guests start to arrive.

First looks don’t take a super long time. Sometimes it’s just a quick “HEY!”. Other times, it’s a bit more of an event, with vows or notes being read privately to one another.

When there is a first look, my goal is to take care of most all of the photos before the ceremony.

A few things to keep in mind — sometimes it is hard to get all of your family to arrive early for this, so if some aren’t able to make it, we can quickly grab them for photos at the start of cocktail hour. I do my best to address these possibilities when we plan out your day so I am ready to accommodate.

And lastly, if there is crazy beautiful light or something just totally gorgeous happening outside during cocktail hour or during your reception, I will go and find you and see if you’d like to go out and explore together. I usually keep the possibility open and check in with you two.