Getting Ready Tips: How Many People Does It Take to Button a Wedding Dress?
Updated: 3 days ago
When couples imagine their wedding day, they tend to picture the obvious moments such as the walk down the aisle, the vows, or the first dance. Rarely does anyone daydream about a hotel room full of half-dressed bridesmaids eating bagels while somebody searches for a missing earring. It is a shame, because the getting-ready hours are often my favorite part of the day to photograph.
There is a wonderful combination of excitement and incompetence that seems to descend on otherwise capable adults before a wedding. People who successfully run companies, raise children, and manage households suddenly cannot locate a shoe, fasten a necklace, or remember where they put the bouquet five minutes ago.
It is in the hours before a wedding, when hair is being curled, champagne corks are popping, the flower girl is studying the makeup process as though she has been granted access to classified information, Mom is circulating through the room solving problems, and friends are drifting in and out with stories, coffee, tissues, and unsolicited opinions, that the Big Day has officially begun.
Every now and then the room will grow quiet as a father sees his daughter in her dress, or a grandmother reaches out to smooth a veil. Then someone cracks a joke, everybody laughs, and the spell is broken.
While the ceremony may be the reason everyone has gathered, it is the the getting-ready part that makes it all start to feel real. They are also where many of my favorite photographs come from because nobody is posing.
A few things I have learned in my years shooting weddings
One thing I can say with some certainty after years of photographing weddings is that something will not go exactly as planned. It might rain, someone might be late, or the flowers might arrive somewhere other than where they are supposed to be. The good news is that most of the time, the bride, groom and wedding planner are the only people who even notice. Everyone else has shown up ready to celebrate and have a grand old time.
[Planning your wedding? I put together a simple guide to what to do after you get engaged. https://www.holmanphotography.com/10-steps-to-planning-your-wedding]
It is worth remembering what a wedding is one of those very rare occasions in life when so many of the people you love, from different families, friendships, places and eras of your life, are all gathered in one place to celebrate you. There are not many occasions when that happens again in quite the same way (perhaps your funeral, but you will be considerably less able to enjoy that one).
Getting Ready Short List
Over the years, I have also accumulated a short list of decidedly unglamorous things that can make a wedding day go more smoothly:
Bring something for stains. White dresses, makeup, wine and food are not always natural allies.
Throw some clear fingernail polish and saftey pins into the emergency kit. They are useful for stopping runs in stockings and all sorts of little things that suddenly need sealing or securing.
Bring comfortable shoes. Even if you cannot imagine wanting to take off the beautiful ones, you may feel differently six hours later.
Drink water, not only champagne. I have seen brides faint, and it puts a bit of a damper on the festivities.
If there are children in the wedding, bring something for them to do. There is a surprising amount of waiting around on a wedding day, particularly if you are six.
Give older children a job. They can greet people at the guest book, help guests find their way, or become the designated runner when Aunt Sally needs to be located for family photographs.
Tell people ahead of time if you want them in posed photographs. Let them know when and where you will need them, rather than assuming they will somehow know to stick around.
That last one sounds obvious, but it can make an enormous difference. The minutes immediately after a ceremony are exactly when people scatter: someone heads for the bar, old friends spot one another for the first time in years, Grandma starts making her way toward the reception, and Uncle Joe is inevitably nowhere to be found. Letting people know ahead of time that you would like them to stay nearby for photographs saves a surprising amount of time and lets everyone get on to the celebrating sooner.
Above all, build enough time into the day that you can actually enjoy these hours rather than racing through them. Some of my favorite wedding photographs have very little to do with the things we traditionally think of as wedding photographs. They are the friend steaming the dress while everyone else gets ready, the mother who keeps finding little things to straighten, the sister sitting on the floor talking to the bride, or the father trying very hard not to cry when he sees his daughter dressed for the first time.
Those moments are easy to overlook when everyone is focused on getting to the ceremony on time, but years later they often say as much about the day as the photographs from the ceremony itself. By the time everyone walks down the aisle, a good part of the story has already happened.
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Jody Holman is a Bay Area wedding and portrait photographer with more than twenty years of experience photographing weddings, elopements, proposals and families. Based in Pacifica, California, she works throughout San Francisco, Napa and Sonoma, Half Moon Bay, Carmel and the California coast. Her photography is natural, inclusive and editorial, with an emphasis on genuine moments rather than staging. More about Jody & Wedding photography & pricing
