Yes, I know we live in the South and yes, I know it's considered "bad luck" for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. However, just in case your open to new ideas, photography is important to your day (which it should be!), or your wedding is late, I want to introduce you to the idea of a first look! We absolutely love having extra time before the ceremony to capture amazing images of you and your fiance and you will love the up-close emotional photos of you seeing each other for the first time! Don't worry about old superstitions! Toss them out the window and let's spend some time capturing images you will cherish forever. This is especially vital if your wedding is close to sunset or during sunset. You don't want it to be dark and have no time to capture beautiful images of you and your groom. After the ceremony then you can party the night away and have no delay!

Even if you decided not to see fiance before the ceremony, we can still do fun pre-wedding photo shoots while there is nice bright light outside. I encourage you to get as many photos before the ceremony as you can! Make sure you tell your wedding party and your family to be to be ready at least an hour before the ceremony starts. We usually do the girl's group first, an hour before the ceremony, and then the boy's group portraits right after the girls. If you have people in your wedding party who are notoriously late tell them to be there EXTRA early to make sure there is time.

No matter how amazing your hair stylist and makeup artist are, you will probably need them there a little bit longer than you plan for. We can't even begin to tell you how many times we have run out of picture time because hair and makeup ran long. Always add an hour to however long you think hair and makeup will take - especially if you have a large bridal party!

Plan for everything to take longer than you think. If you need help filling out your timeline, I will be glad to help. Don't just plan for a ceremony to be 15 minutes because you never know if it will start on time. Don't just plan the minimal time for portraits, because I promise we won't have time. Make sure you over compensate with your hours if you want optimal photos. I have had countless times that all the photos weren't completed before the ceremony, then the ceremony started late and there was only an hour alloted for photos. There were only a couple photos of the bride and groom taken then because they didn't want to be late for the reception, which is perfectly understandable! So make sure to overcompensate, weddings always run late!

After the ceremony or before the ceremony (preferrably as many as you can) we will do posed family photos. To make this time go by as quickly as possible make a list of group photos and organize them in a way that makes the most sense. Biggest groups should go first, then smaller, then immediate family. Another way to move this time along is to designate one person from the bride's family and one from the groom's family (or a bridesmaid/groomsmen that knows everyone) to be in charge of gathering and calling out names for the posed photos. Our biggest suggestion is to KEEP YOUR LIST AS SHORT AS YOU CAN! We know you have a lot of important family, but nobody likes to stand around for hours! Expect each posed photo to take 5 minutes and decide how long is enough BEFORE the big day!