Hidden Killers For Your Wedding Timeline
These are the things that are secretly killing your wedding timeline. I’ve seen a million variations of wedding timelines in my 12 years as a wedding photographer. And while there is definitely no one size fits all approach to planning out a timeline for your wedding day. In this article I’m going to share some tips that I believe are usually things you wouldn’t think about if you didn’t go to weddings all the time.
Everyone talks about how fast your wedding day goes. It’s true! It absolutely flies by… And there are some things that can’t be changed about that. But there are a lot of things that you would probably never think of being things that massively kill your wedding timeline and eat up so much unnecessary time.
I’m going to give you my observations as a professional wedding photographer for over 12 years who’s photographed hundreds of weddings of the most common things that you wouldn’t think of when planning your wedding, that absolutely kill your time on the wedding day.
Number 1. A Big Bridal Party
I really don’t think people ever consider how much time in their day will be taken up by having a big bridal party. The size of the bridal party you choose to have will have an impact on many aspects of your day. Particularly your timeline. (AND crucially your budget). Not only are there more suits to buy / hire. More dresses to get fitted, more bouquets to buy, hair and makeup costs per person. The time it takes for all those things to happen on your day can eat away into the time you’re actually spending celebrating.
For example; the difference between 3 bridesmaids and 6 bridesmaids is obviously double the time for hair and makeup in the morning. Which usually either means you’ve got to get up at 5am for the makeup to begin. Or you need to push your wedding ceremony start time back to really late in the day and effectively spend as many hours “getting ready” as you do celebrating with your wider guest list.
The other main way that a big bridal party can eat through your timeline is obviously in your movements throughout the day just taking longer. There’s always a time to get in and out of cars to get to the venue, getting around the venue or other locations for your photos after the ceremony. Obviously doing your group photos with a huge bridal party can take a little bit longer just generally but it’s really the moving time around the venue / photo locations which takes time out of your day.
Number 2. Multiple locations.
It’s easy to fall in love with a wedding location without taking into consideration all of the surrounding elements. The amount of locations involved in your wedding day can be huge hidden killers to your wedding timeline. Before you lock in your venue it’s really important to have a think about what other locations are involved. Are you getting ready at the venue or nearby? Do you need to drive far between the getting ready locations and the ceremony / reception? Are you having the ceremony and the reception at the same place or is there a big drive in between? Does your venue have beautiful spots for photos or do you need to go offsite and if so how far will you need to drive for those locations.
Weighing up all of these options can really effect your wedding timeline, and your wedding budget! I’ve photographed countless weddings where I had to drive 30+ minutes between one getting ready location to another. Then drive another 30 minutes to the ceremony then detour 20 minutes between multiple photo stops before getting back to the reception. That’s added multiple hours of effectively wasted time into those couples wedding day. It’s also meant they’ve had to pay me for hours of time that I was essentially sitting in traffic between all of those locations not actually capturing magic moments for them.
Number 3. Disorganised group photos
Family photos after the ceremony or at the getting ready locations can be a huge time killer that eat up a lot of space in your wedding timeline. But they really don’t have to be. The biggest time killer for group photos is simply just a lack of organisation. Most people wouldn’t think about how long it might take to round up everyone in their family’s for group shots but it can take a huge amount of time. Often right after the ceremony everyone spreads out all over the venue. Some people run to the bar, some to the toilet, some to go chase ducks by the pond, then some like to run across the road from the church for a cheeky latte. Trying to find & wrangle all of these family members all back together at once can be tricky to do quickly.
Having someone who’s job it is to keep the list of combinations on them and make sure they gather those people emmediately after the ceremony and keep them from running off can really save you a lot of time. The other thing that helps A LOT, is to have your celebrate remind everyone that there will be some group photos after the ceremony and point out your organiser who’s got the list for people who aren’t sure if they’ll be in those family groups. That way people know ahead of time not to run off if they’ll be in those shots.
The second way to let the group photos kill your wedding timeline is big group photos. It’s much quicker to do a bunch more small groups than it is to try and get one giant group photo of everyone. I have never seen a group photo of the entire wedding that looked like a “nice photo” it’s just a blob of tiny heads and you usually can’t see past the first few rows of faces.. it’s almost impossible to have everyone’s eyes open at once and by the time you round everyone up.. find a ladder for me to climb up. Move half the ceremony chairs out of the way etc all the things that often need to happen can add up to one very average photo and a huge waste of time on your day.
Number 4. Dance floor Timeline
Stop start dance floors are also a hidden killer of your wedding timeline… I think people often underestimate how long it can take to move a group of people around your wedding venue. Lots of weddings I photograph will have everyone hop up for the first dance, then stop the dance floor to cut the cake.. everyone leaves the dance floor to eat dessert and then they try to restart it. Only to stop it again 15 minutes later for the bouquet toss. There’s a few reasons for why this just makes no sense.
Mostly… the flow. Dance floors in my experience are a living organism. Think of them like a plant. If you put take a plant out of a pot and put it into a new pot there’s a time you really should wait before you take it out and give its roots another disturbance. Root shock isn’t good for plants. Dancefloors are the same. You cannot get people jumping up on the dance floor to your favourite bangers and then suddenly turn off the music for 5-10 minutes and then try and revive it again. It gives root shock to your dance floor!
How these wedding timeline factors can blow out your wedding budget
I think regardless of what you think about multiple locations, big bridal parties etc. So many of these things are validly things you might just want to choose more than you want to extend the time you feel like you have on the wedding day. And that’s completely fine. You should never let anyone tell you what your priority’s must be. Especially if they are someone from the wedding industry.
However.. Perhaps more importantly for lots of you. These timeline choices can have a shockingly huge effect on your wedding budget. So lets do some simple example maths to see how much money could be leaving your bank account if you allow your wedding timeline to get out of hand.
First up. The big bridal party.
The first extra cost with a bigger bridal party is more accomodation expenses for your getting ready location. Finding a bigger airbnb each bridal party of 3 around Byron Bay’s Bungalow wedding region is typically around $1000-$1500 for 2 nights. Adding 2 extra beds to your search for the same dates and location can make the price skyrocket to closer to $2000-$5000 for two nights because you’re going to need mansions to fit everyone at this point. Times that by two for both big bridal parties and you’re potentially having to spend $1000-$2000 extra easily just for your getting ready location alone.
Now let’s add hair and makeup, suits / dresses. Remembering we’re working with an “average size” bridal party of 3 bridal party members on each side vs what I’d call a big bridal party of 5 on each side. Now I do not want to assume that there’s going to be an even number of guys / girls in each bridal party but for the sake of simple maths please don’t think I’m not progressive. I am. I just don’t like complicating maths. So let’s pretend that either your bridal parties are mixed but an even number of people needing suits / dresses or hair makeup done on the day.
Choosing to hire a 4 suits from somewhere like Tony Barlow in Brisbane will set you back $740 ish. Adding 2 more makes it $1100. So we’re already out an extra $360 on suits. lets move onto dresses. Nobody really hires bridal party dresses so we’re going to assume you’re buying them (yes I know you’ll probably get your crew to pay for their own because they’ll use them again but let’s leave it in anyway. For some common choices like dresses from Bec & Bridge you’re at around $350 each so for 3 you’re at $1050 for dresses and adding 2 more makes it $1750. That totals an extra $1060 for suits & dresses.
Hair & makeup costs are another big one eating into your wedding budget if you do choose to have a bigger bridal party. I’ve borrowed these cost estimates from the legends at WedShed. They say that the average cost per service is 120-180 for bridesmaids and a bit more for a bride as they’re obviously getting a more extensive treatment. So that’s and extra $240-$360 per bridesmaid for hair & makeup. so adding adding two more bridesmaids might be setting you back another $720.
The last cost with bigger bridal parties is extra flowers. Bouquets and buttonholes for your bridal party members. These costs can vary hugely as well depending on the quality of your florist and the types of flowers you’re choosing to use. One florist in Sydney has got their pricing packages online and quoted for a mixed bridal party of 3 bridesmaids and 3 groomsmen for $740 and for 5 bridesmaids and 5 groomsmen it’s $1060 costing an extra $320 for 2 extra button holes and bouquets.
This leaves a total of up to $4100 in extra cost by adding 2 more bridal party members to both sides of there aisle for your wedding.
Next up: multiple locations:
This one is a little bit more tricky to calculate as there are a lot of variables. The hardest part to measure is the cost of having your ceremony at one location and your reception somewhere else. Some places will obviously charge you a similar amount whether you’re hosting your ceremony at the venue or offsite at a church for example. So you could find yourself up for around an extra $1500 or more to hire a chapel for your ceremony. Lots of reception venues do have their own chapels or suitable indoor ceremony options included in their pricing already which could save you a bunch.
The part you probably haven’t thought of about the cost of having multiple locations comes into play with your wedding photographer & videography costs. If you have your wedding all at one venue at you’re either getting ready really close by or you’re getting ready at the venue. You’ll need to pay for much less coverage of your day from the photo / video crew. Usually 8 hours of coverage will cover getting ready until the dance floor is jumping for most wedding days if it’s all in one location.
However if you’re going offsite for photos to multiple stops or you have getting ready locations far apart and then a decent drive between the ceremony and reception you could need to factor in an extra 2 + hours for your booking for the photographer & videographer to cover the same amount of your day. Everyone’s pricing will be different but on average I would imagine that you’d be spending at least an extra $1000 to add 2 hours of photo & video to your day.
This applies the same for poorly planned group shots and timelines with loads of dead space as well. The longer the parts of your wedding are that you’d like captured by your photographer / videographer the longer you’ll be paying to have them there. I obviously do not recommend planning a super rushed timeline just to save some money. But it’s definitely worth thinking about the flow of your day so that you’re not spending money that you don’t need to on these services.
There’s definitely potential for the multiple locations you choose to end up costing you at least $2500 to $3500 vs a wedding with everything close together or ideally all on one site.
Finally Stop Start Dancefloors:
Just like the multiple locations if you want to have your photographer stay up until the last “event” moment which for many people is the bouquet toss and capturing some of the dancing really going off. The stop start nature of the dance floors that commonly happen can really drag out that moment meaning you’re paying that photographer / videographer to stay later unnecessarily and burning more money.
Adding up the cost of this timeline
The big bridal party is definitely the big spender here. Both in time and money. But totally it all up. Shockingly the cost of all of these timeline decisions to your wedding budget could easily cost you $7500. I’m sure depending on your choice of florals and really nice accomodation for getting ready that could easily blow out even more. You could definitely make some huge savings by choosing a location close to home and cutting the accomodation costs down to zero. I hope this article has been helpful in considering the finer details of your wedding day choices and how they impact your timeline and your wedding budget.
