I’ve never met a bride who wouldn’t agree that time FLIES by on your wedding day.  It comes and goes in the blink of an eye, so you want to use that little bit of time as wisely as possible.  Here are 5 easy things you can do to save a ton of time on your wedding day.

 1. Practice getting into your dress and bustling it.  These two things together could save an hour on a wedding day.  Depending on how tricky your dress is (completely buttons v. a simple zipper), and what kind of bustle you have.. it can eat up a lot of time on a wedding day.  When you go to your final fitting, make sure you bring along your maid of honor, your momma, or whoever is going to be in charge of making sure they know exactly what to do to get you into your dress AND how to bustle it!  This can be a HUGE time saver, and you can avoid a huge stressor!

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2. Have the officiant announce for family to stay back for portraits after the ceremony.  Once you’ve completed your recessional, guests will usually wait a second to see what the officiant tells them to do.  Normally, he will invite guests towards the cocktail area, but have him also ask for family to stay back for pictures.  It also helps to have this idea circulate around during the rehearsal dinner the night before.  Trying to hunt down family members can eat up a lot of time!  Also, if you want other pictures of large groupings (like college friends, or all your cousins, etc.) take these during the reception.  Your DJ can call over all these people to a certain area and we can snap a few pictures quickly.

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3.  Do a first look.  If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times.  A first look is the number one thing you can do to have a relaxed timeline!  You can read all about first looks here and here.  To say we love first looks would be a serious understatement.

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4.  Have a day of coordinator.  Your DOC will help you create a timeline, and most importantly, will help you stick to it!  It’s very easy to loose a few minutes here and there on a wedding day.. and that can add up to loosing a lot of time overall.  The best part is your DOC will do WAY more than just keep you on schedule.  She will be a good investment!

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5.  Avoid having a long list of pinterest images to recreate, or a ton of spots you want to take photos.  Trying to recreate a moment, rather than allowing the moments to happen on your wedding day can cost you a lot of time.  Especially if you are looking at a long pinterest wall of favorites.  Try to keep in mind that all those favorite images most likely didn’t happen on one wedding day.  Be careful, and avoid creating unrealistic expectations.  This also goes for choosing portrait locations.  Sure, if you build in a TON of time, we can go anywhere you want!  But trust us to make the best use of the space and time we have to take portraits.  Travel time can be a huuuuumongous time suck.

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Hope that helps, and let us know if you have any timeline questions!  We are more than happy to help you create your perfect timeline.