Wedding Advice from a Wedding Photographer (Who Just Got Married)
Throughout the years, I have given countless wedding advice from the perspective of a photographer, but after hosting a wedding of my own, I’ve learned a few new tips from a bride’s point of view — and I’m sharing them here with you. Hope you find something useful in here and can make it your own.
All wedding photos by our incredible photographer, Caleb Gaskins.
Add a few extra days.
This is likely the only time in your life that you’ll get all of your favorite people in the same place — take advantage of that.
It was important to us to spend as much time with our guests as possible. Asking people to travel / spend money / take work days off for you is a big ask, so we wanted to make sure people got more than a ten minute interaction with us at the reception, and left the weekend feeling special and acknowledged and that their time spent here was worth the effort.
We decided to spend a full week in Santa Fe and invited everyone to come for as long (or as little) as they wanted. We filled those days with experiences that gave them the opportunity to see more of the city, like hiking, riding horses, and exploring historic downtown. Having those few extra days gave us the chance to really spend time and have conversations with everyone, so no interaction on the actual wedding day felt too short.
Introduce people, a lot.
This was one of the most important lessons I learned while reading The Art of Gathering. As Parker writes in her book, “one measure of a successful gathering is that it starts off with a higher number of host-guest connections than guest-guest connections, and ends with those tallies reversed, far in the guest-guest favor.”
We knew we wouldn’t have the time to introduce everyone, so we made “connection cards” for all of our guests to use throughout the weekend. Each card included three people we wanted them to meet (with photos!), each with their own description, topics to ask them about (because small talk is boring), and why we thought they’d get along.
It was so sweet watching everyone use these at our welcome party, breaking out of their comfort circles and going out of their way to meet someone new (this especially helped our out-of-state friends — who came in knowing no one — feel included and part of the group). Come wedding day, it already felt like everyone knew everyone, and the party was all the better because of it.
Less trends, more personal details.
Listen, I love a trend just as much as the next person (I’m just a girl, after all), but why fill your day with details you’ve seen a million times when you could be including more personal elements that can’t be replicated by anybody else? I want to see the accessories you inherited from your grandparents, or the heirlooms your parents held on to from their wedding, or the little notes and photos you’ve kept throughout your relationship.
Our favorite personal details: my mom’s wedding hanbok, my late grandmother’s clutch filled with her signature origami stars, our first dance sung by one of our best friends, a custom hair bow made by my mom, and a first photo / drawing of each other to add to our collection of photos and drawings we’ve made of each other throughout our relationship.
Work with your venue, not against it.
Instead of simply choosing colors you like for your wedding theme, try to pick colors and decor that will compliment your venue.
As much as I would have loved to add a pop of red into our arrangements, it would have clashed with the terracotta walls. We also chose to skip on traditional florals since flowers wouldn’t make much sense in the desert. Instead, we opted for a monochromatic green palette with some native grasses and rocks to mimic the natural landscape, as if they were just growing through the cracks. We also added some wooden chairs to match the other natural elements of the venue, and we really love how it all came together.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Form Floral. You crushed this.
Give your guests a prompt for your guestbook.
So often, I’ll get up to a guestbook at a wedding, stumble on what to write, and end up scribbling a simple “congrats, love you!” and calling it a day. We wanted to help our guests with this, so we left a small note that asked them to tell us about their favorite memory from the week, or their favorite person they met, or a moment we might have missed. This made for some really fun answers, and we still love reading through these months later.
Bonus Tip: instead of a book, get individual postcards / notecards instead! This gave our guests the flexibility for more than one person to write at a time (instead of having to wait in line), and it encouraged them to write longer notes (our love language).
Don’t wait to send thank you notes, give them out day of.
Instead of printing menus for the table, we wrote personal, handwritten notes to each of our guests. Even with just 45 people, we knew we wouldn’t be able to interact and have meaningful conversations with everyone the way we wanted to. Still, we wanted to make sure that everyone there felt important; that their invitation was not by accident. Through our notes, we were able to have an intimate moment with all of our guests at once — telling them our favorite things about them, how much they mean to us, and how thankful we were to have them with us on our big day. Looking around the table as our guests read their notes (and making our dads cry) was one of our favorite memories from the day.
Plus, this saves you the added task of writing thank you cards after the wedding. This way, once the party’s over, there’s no more work to be done.
Add the niche songs to your playlist.
Hosting a wedding means you’ve been given the golden opportunity to build a dance playlist that is entirely your own — so put those niche songs you love on there and dance your little heart out. In between the ABBA discography and the crowd pleasers, make sure you add in the songs you may never hear a DJ play otherwise.
Unexpected hits at our wedding: Good as Gold for our fellow Vanderpump Rules bingers, All Eyes on Me for the Bo Burnham fans, and All I Want for Christmas is You for… well me, mostly.
Bonus Tip: people love an iconic TV theme song. The Office theme and Renaissance (otherwise known as the title song for White Lotus) were fun additions to our playlist.
Write everything down.
Adrenaline will be pumping. Emotions will be high. The day will fly by in the blink of an eye. You will forget things, so don’t forget to write it all down.
On our drive home, Jeffrey and I spent the seven hours recounting everything from the week and jotting them down into bullet points on my notes app. Even by the following week, there were things we had written down that I had already forgotten about. There are certain moments that no one else but the two of you will witness, moments that weren’t photographed, moments that will only be remembered by the memory in your brain — so don’t forget to document those parts too.
Here are some of my favorite bullet points from our notes:
Mom and her sisters taking a shot ski at the welcome party.
Crying when we had to leave each other in the morning.
My mom’s reaction to seeing her finished hair and makeup. I think she felt really pretty.
Throwing grapes at dinner. Everyone chanting “Jeff to Jeff” when Jeffrey caught the one that his dad threw from the other table.
Jeffrey’s dad thanking me for making Jeffrey so happy.
And most importantly, do what you want.
I know this is easier said than done. People (especially family) get weird when you tell them you’re getting married. But you only get to do this day once, so you damn sure deserve to make the day exactly how you want it to be. Planning a wedding is stressful as hell, but if you make it how you want it, it’s worth all the work (and money) you put into it.
