"The Itinerary"

Your ""wedding day" begins with a quick cup of coffee, breakfast and a mad dash to start the makeup and hair process to achieve that perfect "bride" look you have dreamed about your whole life. So far everything is on schedule and the nerves and excitement are starting to escalate to a feverish high. Cell phones ringing off the hook with last minute questions and folks checking in to see how you are doing. The photographer arrives ready to go and you get a call. Some of the family members are hung up in traffic and will be late getting there. You have arranged for the pictures to be completed before the ceremony and now you find out that some of the important people won't be there in time for the pictures. You're not worried though because you have planned for this! Right?

So many times I have seen this happen. This one set back can make or break your wedding day expectations. I have been told repeatedly that "the chef can't hold the food"! Everything that day is set according to the time-line that has been planned out and one set back can truncate the whole time table. Multiple set backs can really create problems. How important is it that these set backs are planned for in advance so that your day can still progress smoothly and without a hitch? It is by far the most important thing to consider when planning out your day. Allowing a "buffer" so-to-speak of time will enable you to move forward with your time-line without creating undue stress and will still allow you to accomplish all of the things you had planned on. Having your time-line planned out "to the minute" sounds like a great thing and may make you come across as being very organized and orderly but is not very practical in the "real world".

Assuming you inserted buffers into the time-line, you can easily get the pictures with the people who are on time and still be able to get the pictures with the ones who arrived late, lets say, after the ceremony. It would require only a few minutes and shouldn't be a problem assuming you have a buffer between the ceremony and the cocktail hour/dinner. It would require a minor change and best of all, you still wouldn't feel rushed.

I encourage you all to work closely with your photographer and other vendors regarding your itinerary. Make sure everyone is on the "same page". It is a huge help to have someone to help you and to take responsibility to organize and to get people where they need to be. Don't be afraid to delegate. There is usually plenty of people around to get things accomplished no matter how small they may seem. As a bride you don't need to be running around trying to figure out how to make something happen. It's all about you on that day. We all need to be there for you to help make your day go off without a hitch!

Talk to your vendors. Ask questions. Work with them. Draw off of their experience. It may well be your first experience with this sort of thing. For us, it's literally "what we do" and we have seen a lot!

Congratulations and All the Best!
Steve Dunbar
Dunbar Photographic