Today, we wanted to share some tips on another important wedding day subject…family formal portraits! There’s no doubt that these are super important on a wedding day, so we wanted to discuss some ways to help make them go smoothly and efficiently!

Have a list of the people you want in the photos.

When we send out the wedding day questionnaire a month before your big day, you will be asked who all you would like pictures with for the formal church portraits. We always do B+G with all variations of their immediate families. We typically don’t do too many extended family portraits just because of the amount of time it can take up (taking time away from the portraits of just the bride and groom and their bridal party), but when we send of the questionnaire, that is the time to tell us all the pictures you would like.

Inform those individuals ahead of time.

This isn’t always on a bride’s to-do list during the weeks leading up to the wedding, but it can be quite helpful on the big day. If you have a handful of family members that you need to stay after the ceremony for pictures, you are going to want to inform them ahead of time. Often times, family members don’t know if they are needed for pictures and head straight to the reception. In order to avoid this, you could send them an email a couple weeks before or assign someone on the day of the wedding to inform them and make sure they stay around after the ceremony.

Don’t meet with guests after ceremony…go straight to the pictures.

We aren’t saying not to do a fun exit with bubbles, confetti, etc., but we are suggesting possibly saving the receiving line for the reception or just simply walking around the reception hall visiting with the guests after you eat. When you do a receiving line at the church or choose to visit with guests immediately after the ceremony, it makes it much more difficult to pull away and get to the formal family pictures in a timely manner.