Family photographs are the single most reliable way to lose an hour of your wedding day, and the single easiest thing to fix. It takes one sheet of paper, written three weeks in advance.
Done properly, the whole set takes twenty minutes. Done badly, it takes fifty, it happens during the golden hour, and your grandmother stands up for all of it.
Why it goes wrong
Not because of the photographs. Because of the calling. Without a list, the sequence is: think of a grouping, say it out loud, wait while forty people work out whether they are in it, wait while somebody fetches an uncle from the bar, take the photograph, think of the next grouping.
The photography takes eight seconds. Everything around it takes four minutes, and there are twelve groupings.
You are not waiting for a camera. You are waiting for people to understand that they are being asked for.
The list
Write it as groupings, with first names, in an order that lets people leave. Largest first, then peel away:
- Everybody — all guests, one frame, done immediately after the ceremony while nobody has wandered off
- Both families together
- Ivy’s family — Ivy, Tom, Margaret, Peter, Sam, Kate
- Ivy’s parents — Ivy, Tom, Margaret, Peter
- Ivy and her grandmother — Ivy, Tom, Nana Jean
- Ivy’s siblings — Ivy, Sam, Kate
- … then the same shape for the other side
- The two of you with the people who got you here — whoever that means
Ten to twelve groupings is right. Fifteen is the point at which the whole thing stops being fun for anybody, including the people in the photographs.
Name one person who is not you
This is the actual trick. Somebody loud, who knows both families, and who is not in the wedding party. A cousin, an usher, an aunt with a carrying voice. Give them the list, and their job is to call the next grouping while I am still photographing the current one.
With a caller, twelve groupings take twenty minutes. Without one, the same twelve take the best part of an hour, and the couple ends up doing the calling at their own wedding.
The list gets you the formal ones quickly. The quick ones are what buy you time for these.
Where and when
Straight after the ceremony, while everybody is still in one place and nobody has a drink yet. Twenty minutes here saves you being fetched out of your own reception later.
In open shade — the north side of a building, under a tree, inside a doorway. Never with the sun behind the group, and never in direct midday light, which closes everybody’s eyes.
Somewhere within thirty seconds of where the guests are. If the beautiful wall is a four-minute walk away, it is not the right wall.
What not to put on the list
Anything you are including out of obligation and would not print. Every grouping costs the same two minutes, and the fifteenth one is always the one nobody looks at again.
And do not list the candid photographs. “Mum laughing with Nana” is not a grouping, it is something I am already watching for. The list is for the ones that will not happen unless somebody organises them.
Send it to me early
Three weeks out, not the night before. I will tell you which groupings are duplicates, roughly how long yours will take, and where at your venue we should stand. Then I print it and keep it in my pocket, and your caller keeps the other copy.
— Amanda