5 Tips to Better Family Portraits on Your Wedding Day |

5 Tips to Better Family Portriats on Your Wedding Day

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5 Tips to Better Family Portraits on Your Wedding Day

Did you know that family portrait time on your wedding day can be one of the most stressful times of your big day? It can be a bit chaotic to wrangle 50 family members when all they want to do is sit in the air conditioning, sip on punch and throw it back to the good ole’ days with memories.  It’s true that weddings and funerals really are the reasons families gather together and you want that time to be enjoyable – and most importantly, stress free for you.

Here’s 5 of my favorite tips to make sure that family portrait time is quick, easy and painless and that your uncle Joe can get back to telling your in laws about the deer he shot last week.

  1. Make a list of the formal portraits you’d like ahead of time. This can make it really easy for your photographer to work down a list of the portraits and take all the stress of yelling out names off of you.
  2. Talk to BOTH sides of the family.  I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been at a wedding where the mother of the groom timidly asks for one photo.  Often, the groom’s family feels less inclined to make requests because traditionally, the bride’s family pays for the photographer.  However, you can help smooth that fear away by making sure both families have input in the images they want taken during family portrait time. This helps everyone feel included.
  3. Keep your groupings simple.  Moving people in and out can get tough (and time consuming) Keeping your groupings simple can help minimize the amount of images taken, the dead time spent standing in one position and help keep everyone’s trapped time to a minimum.
  4. Work your way up.  Working with the smallest group first can help build your groupings into the large ones really easily.  Think about immediate family first, then adding in extended families.
  5.  Be specificIn your list, be as specific as possible, for example, to notate an image of just the bride and a parent, put in Bride + Dad.  Bride + Mom.  Then, one of them together, Bride + Mom + Dad.  And then, notate that you want to add in your handsome new husband.  Bride + Groom + Mom + Dad.  Being specific about your groupings can help make the process SO MUCH EASIER because your photographer will know exactly what you want and what’s important to you.  It’s easy on the day of to get a little mixed up with who has been added to what photo – so mapping it out ahead of time is definitely the way to go!

I hope these tips have helped make family portraits for you more seamless, less stressful and a wonderfully calm experience on your wedding day! If you need help building a map of your own family portraits, shoot me an email! I’m happy to help at cassie@cassiejonesphotography.net

5 Tips to Better Family Portraits on Your Wedding Day

 

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