Stress Free Wedding Timeline | Real Bride Interview

As an Austin wedding photographer who’s worked with many couples, one thing I’ve noticed is that they’re always going to feel some stress over their wedding timeline. There’s just no two ways around that! Because my work is documentary style wedding photography (Read more about that here), I always want my couples to be relaxed and enjoy their wedding in real time so I always try to encourage them that it can actually go well, and it will go well if you know what to focus on! The default mode I see couples go into is that they try and plan every last detail down to the second, thinking that sticking to a strict timeline will save their wedding from going off the rails in terms of timing, but in my experience, that is actually exactly what will make the timeline get all topsy turvy. 

This is especially true for a recent wedding I photographed while working as a destination wedding photographer for a couple who got it just right. The following is a brief interview between the actual bride and the coordinator, Magen from ManskiHaus, we worked with. The wedding stayed on schedule the entire day and it felt like there was time to do anything their heart desired all day! I’d never seen a day stay on schedule so effortlessly, so I wanted to ask her and her coordinator, how did we do that?

Bride: Well, it was definitely like months and months of mulling over a timeline! But I would say the three things that we did were thi. One, leave way more time for things than you think you're gonna need, because inevitably, that time will get eaten up by like, the weird in between. Two, make time for the weird in-betweens of like, transition from location to location. Think about your traveling through the day, and think about the in-between. Third would be, be unconventional. I think our timeline, we were not scared to be like, who cares if this is when you traditionally make a grand entrance; this is when we want to do it. And so thinking more naturally about it definitely gave us a better time. 

Coordinator: I think just having really excellent communication with all of the vendors was vital to the whole day and the months leading up to it was making sure everyone was on the same page, everyone understood their roles, the timeframe and yeah, just having that unconventionality and pivoting when we needed to, and having an incredible bride and groom that were okay with those pivots as well. Yeah, it was great. We started early, and we started strong so that we could make those little tweaks and pivots before the wedding even got there, before those day of pivots. Yeah, yeah. And we had so much time set aside for photos, which is what you wanted, right? 

Me: Yeah. So everything felt, from my end, so relaxed, and everything just felt like it was moving the way it needed to, to get you guys everything you wanted and, yeah, just leaving that buffer zone to make sure if anything changes, we can make a pivot. You guys have that option. It's not like everything's falling apart, yeah? So things could happen naturally, and they just felt great.

This blog was actually a follow up to one I wrote recently that gives a detailed overview about how you can plan out your wedding timeline to enjoy your wedding at a relaxed pace and have all the special moments that mean the most to you! Read that here!

About the Author

Hey Y’all! I’m Thomas, a New Jersey native turned Texas transplant. I’m a third-generation photographer and a deep extrovert. You’ll usually find me with the people I love, putting them in front of my camera so I can capture the incredible stories unfolding around me. It’s this drive that sent me down the road of bringing visual storytelling to people’s wedding days. 

The best part of my job is getting to capture the unique story that unfolds during your wedding day so you can look back on it for a lifetime.