The Most Common Wedding Events
There is a reason most weddings get scheduled out a year or more in advance, and it isn’t just to plan the wedding itself. It is to allow time for all the additional events, celebrations, and parties to take place that also happen in accordance with a wedding. Your family and friends all want a chance to celebrate you and your love story and sometimes there may even be multiple parties for the same event - like having to plan two bridal showers on each side of the country. So let’s talk about the most common wedding events, and why you may want your photographer to cover as much of it all as possible! Limber up, it’s a long journey to the finish line.
Engagement Party
Once you have announced your engagement, it’s time to plan a big celebration for it! The amount of time you carry the title, “fiancé” is a very short time period when looking at the span of your relationship. That in itself should be celebrated. Say it as often as you can! And the engagement party makes a great excuse to introduce each other to friends, family, parents of friends, your parents’ friends, etc. all while saying, “Hi, I’d love for you to meet my fiancé!" That is the big thing though - this party is the perfect time for your family and friends to meet, for your in-laws to better connect, and soak in how loved you are from everyone around you. Once the wedding day rolls around, everyone will feel more comfortable together since they have already met beforehand!
I love photographing engagement parties. It has the same charged atmosphere that the welcome party has. People are seeing each other for the first time in a long time, meshing the different segments of their lives together all in the name of your love story. It is a great time for a quick little portrait session with your fiancé, more casual family formals also take place, and of course, all the fun and candid photos we can squeeze in! This is also a great time to debut your wedding logo - you'll work closely with your planner and stationer for the entirety of this marathon - go ahead and start utilizing some of the fun design pieces to give your guests a little peek at what's to come for the wedding!
Wedding Shower
Ahh, the tradition of being showered by gifts and embarrassed by your family and friends all at the same time. The wedding shower is typically hosted by a member of your wedding party and will include certain family members like moms, aunts, cousins, and then besties and close wedding guests. It is usually a more casual daytime affair with hors d'oeuvres, finger foods, and light spirits. Generally, there’s a fun theme and lots of selfies to be had. Your crazy Aunt Kimmy will gift you with several boxes of frilly underwear you’ll likely never wear while your best friend winks at you from the corner, knowing you’ll laugh about this later. Often, there are games involved like some form of The Newlywed Game, trivia, or musical bouquet.
While your professional photographer may not need to be there for this, I highly recommend taking plenty of phone photos, selfies, and maybe even have a disposable or instant camera on hand. These are moments you’ll want to remember with your best friends. This is also a fantastic opportunity for a photo booth, like the TEP Booth. DIY a fun background maybe with ballons, faux florals, or just a black sheet and we can set the booth up right in front to give your guests a fun and interactive option for more photos!
Bach Party
Ah, your last “single” life getaway. Don’t be fooled by Hollywood - while these celebrations can get a bit wild, you can also opt for a relaxing spa weekend with your closest friends too. Do what you want to do, whether that’s traveling to Charleston and eating all of the home-cooked southern foods or heading to Palm Springs to spend a weekend by the pool with a Mad Men theme. Personally, I have always been a fan of the Hen Night and everyone wearing their own fun wigs. Your partner might want to spend his weekend at a golf club or the quintessential Vegas. If you aren’t looking to spend a full weekend on the bach party, throw a themed picnic party in your backyard, set up a projector, and show films that are on theme.
Depending on what you opt for, you might want to consider hiring a photographer - either your wedding photographer or someone local to where you’ll be traveling. If you decide to spend the weekend poolside in Palm Springs at the Ace Hotel, it might be really fun to schedule a quick session - especially if you opt for 60’s bathing suit attire with plastic white rim glasses and swimming caps. Or maybe your friend group loves to just go all out on fashion - a great way to say thank you to them would be for a little photo session prior to dinner one night when you are in the Garden District in New Orleans. Plus - those could be great photos for the wedding website!
Final Wardrobe Fitting
Think of this like what the models do leading up to New York Fashion Week. It is a very celebrity entourage type of moment - you have your closest BFFs there, likely your mother, the seamstress or designer, the troupe of boutique girls passing out champagne, music, and you get to really experience what it is going to be like to float around in your wedding gown all day. They will make sure everything fits just right. You can prance about in your veil and slip and envision the wedding day start to finish. Usually, this takes place a few days before the wedding, if not the day before, though if you have a destination wedding and you are traveling, it could be up to a week before.
This is a new trend picking up traction brought on by the slew of celebrities who are showcasing their dress-fitting photos, like Ivy Getty’s wedding. Now while she had her own celebrity fashion designer, John Galliano, and her whole wedding was on quite another scale (inspiration I almost died for!), I can appreciate the photos simply because it’s a girl who is clearly excited to wear her dream dress and get married to the love of her life. We can relate to that. My suggestion? If you are wanting a Bridal Portrait session, maybe consider a Final Wardrobe Fitting session instead. The photos feel more real, less posed, and inauthentic - it is a real event that has to happen anyway as opposed to being all dressed up as a bride twice. You get to bring along your glam squad, have fun, make memories, and feel like an heiress - I am loving this trend!
Rehearsal Dinner / Welcome Party
This is the kickoff of your wedding weekend. It sets the tone, commonly also has a theme based on the couple’s shared interests, and is hands down one of my favorite events to capture (I shouldn’t say the favorite, but know that it is up there!). Traditionally, the rehearsal dinner takes place after the ceremony rehearsal and consists of the wedding party and immediate family. These days, we are seeing this expanded to be more of an overall welcome party for most, if not all of the wedding guests. While a sit-down dinner may not even happen, buffet foods or appetizers are frequent. You might consider a beach party with live music and a seafood boil or a retro-themed roller rink skate party. There is really no limit to this - make it your own!
From a photography perspective, I love this event because the atmosphere is electric. Your guests, friends, and family are arriving from all over the world, and it is your first time seeing them - capturing these first interactions is such a joy. It gives me the opportunity to meet your wedding party, your families, and know who to pay closer attention to on wedding day - a truly valuable benefit as your documenter. There is excitement, anticipation, and so much love. If you would like to read more about why I highly suggest you consider rehearsal dinner photography, check out this blog here.
Reception After-Party
Most venues have a strict cut-off time even if you may not be finished celebrating. Queue the reception after-party - another trending wedding escapade. If you are still feeling the beat and aren’t ready to call it a night, load up the wedding party and any additional guests and head to the next location. This could be a bowling alley, a rooftop bar, your favorite pool house, or the VIP room at the club, it might even be the local Steak-N-Shake. Change into an eye-catching party outfit, touch up your lipstick, and dance until the sun rises.
Of course, I don’t think any wedding event should be missed. This is a great opportunity for more memorable photos - think direct flash, night-time city lights, blurry movement. I hang around long enough to capture the change in environment maybe have a drink with you and toast to a beautiful day, and then head home. There usually comes a point in the night where you may not actually want me to take photos, and typically, this will turn into that moment 😉
Next-Day Brunch
If you skipped the late-night after-party, you likely have a brunch scheduled the next morning to bid farewell and thank your guests. This is a great opportunity to get double-duty out of your wedding florals and recycle them for brunch decor. Be sure to give your guests who might have had too much fun on the dance floor enough time to shake it off a bit and make it to the late breakfast. Another idea - skip the formal meal altogether. Instead, plan for an extra day and opt for relaxation by the pool, maybe invite your guests to oceanside yoga, and allow people to float in and out according to their own schedules. This works best for a destination or hotel/resort wedding, or maybe even your parents’ lakehouse.
While your photographer certainly does not have to be there for this, it is a great summary of the wedding weekend experience. If it is a destination wedding, I will likely still be onsite, and happy to pop in to grab a few photos of the two of you - now officially married - reclining in each other’s arms on the lounge chairs next to the pool.
Honeymoon
Last but not least and most certainly needed, the honeymoon! I can say from experience that by the time my wedding rolled around, I was most definitely looking forward to the honeymoon. Not to discredit the present joy of my wedding, but it is a marathon, all of these wedding events - planning, stressing, calculating, interacting, and of course, the abundance of emotions. You need time to relax, to process, to recount it (especially the hours where you didn’t get to see your partner - you likely have no idea what the start of their wedding day was like!), and then to just enjoy being newlyweds. Shh… it might actually be the best part!
While there is no doubt you will take plenty of photos on your own, if you’re headed somewhere you have never been before, you might want to schedule a quick honeymoon session. Whether you are skipping through the alleys of Paris or trying some very exotic foods in the heart of a Thai street market, or horseback riding alongside the ocean, or even setting up a picnic in the red clay of Zion - well, I can assure you, these would be beautiful and exciting photos you would have to look back on forever.
These are the most common events of the wedding experience, but that does not mean you have to do all of these, or any of these. As always, what is most important is what speaks to you as a couple. Consider each event and if it holds any significance to you - and if it does, consider how to make it unique per your own tastes. The best part about recent wedding trends - no two are alike any more. There is a huge focus on bringing together family and friends and creating a magical evening that represents you and what is most important to you. And that is what I am there to capture! See you soon.
Pin the graphic below for easy access to this article.
