4 Tips for Building a Timeline Your Photo & Video Crew Will Love
A huge part of building a wedding timeline is remembering to keep vendors’ needs in mind. After all, happy vendors mean a seamless event. Photographers and videographers are an especially important part of your event timeline—so it’s crucial to know their needs and build a timeline that takes those needs into account. Today, we wanted to round up four tips for building a timeline your photo and video crews will love you for. Read on for tips on fine-tuning your timeline to fit their needs.
Encourage a First Look
First looks are becoming increasingly popular—and photographers especially love them. They make for some seriously dreamy images and offer up a level of intimacy that couples otherwise don’t often get during the craze of their wedding day. Plus, this allows your photo and video crews time to get images and footage of the couple all alone before the wedding, rather than having to pull the couple away from the reception (and their guests) for an hour to snap those photos.
Cushion Your Timeline
Videographers need more time to set up and for movement between venues than we often realize. Build your timeline with this in mind. A rushed videographer means rushed footage—which can ultimately mean a less-than-perfect final product (or a final product that’s missing some key shots). Pad your timeline with even more extra time than you think they might need to setup their equipment and move their equipment from space to space. Remember, a generous timeline is always better than a tight one. If you plan for it to take 30 minutes for videographers to move from the outdoor ceremony to the indoor reception, and it only takes them 15, everyone ends up happy and ahead of schedule. Underestimating time, on the other hand, leaves you with a crew that’s stressed and a couple that feels rushed on their Big Day.
Be Aware of the Importance of Lighting
This doesn’t mean you have to be a lighting aficionado, but you should, at minimum, know when outdoor photographs and footage is possible versus when it’s simply not. Talk to the photo and video crews beforehand to get an idea of the ideal lighting they’d like for their images/footage (sunsets on the beach, dusk in the forest, etc.) and work your timeline around this. This may mean you have to move a few things around, but your couple will thank you when they’re left with magical pre-dusk images as opposed to shadow-laden shots.
Include Time for Design Detail Shots
As a planner, you want photographers and videographers to take time to capture the design details you’ve put so much work into. (You’ll need these, after all, to submit your work for publication.) Plus, your couples will be so busy on their big day, that chances are they may miss a design detail or two. It’s always fun for them to have images, then, of those overhead florals or those hand-painted place cards or that stunning lounge area. Don’t forget to include time for this in your timeline. By blocking out 30 minutes or so before the event for photographers and videographers to capture these close-up detail shots, they’ll have time to capture every detail (before it’s been touched by guests) rather than treating design-detail images and footage as an afterthought (in which case, they may miss that gorgeous floral chandelier you designed or that stunning family-photo wall). When in doubt, we believe it's always a good idea to send over the final timeline to the photo & video crew to review before sending it out to all other vendors.
Overall, keeping photographers and videographers in mind when building out your timeline is absolutely key for a successful event. This ensures both the crew and the couple are happy, on-schedule, and stress-free.