Top 5 Tips For Family Photos at Your Wedding

Perfect Family Photos at Weddings tom fuller photography

Top 5 Tips For Perfect Family Formals at Your Wedding

Your wedding is a day when your family and everyone else who’s important to you comes under one roof to celebrate and support your union. So your desire to get all those beautiful people in one frame or maybe a couple of amazing frames is totally legit. However, getting the perfect family photos at weddings can sometimes be challenging. Your close ones could be busy taking care of the jobs assigned to them or even keep getting distracted and leaving the spot before everyone else joins in, so yeah, it’s not ideal. Whatever the reason, you shouldn’t have to compromise on your family photos. But don’t worry, I can help with that. I’ve photographed hundreds of Pennsylvania area weddings and came across a few tips that are guaranteed to help on your wedding day. Here are a few tips that could make the process of taking family photos stress-free.  

Top 5 Tips For Perfect Family Photos At Your Wedding

1. Create a Family Checklist

To ensure you don’t leave out any important people from your family photos, I would highly recommend making a list of all the family members you want to be photographed. You can share this list with your photographer and make any required adjustments to the wedding photography checklist. This way, both parties will be aware of how many groups need to be made, which people would be added to a specific group and how you can shuffle people in these groups. I work with my couples to curate the perfect list for their wedding day and make sure we have the time for all the photos they want which leads up to tip number 2.

2. Set Aside The Right Amount Of Time 

I like to estimate about 1-2 minutes per family portrait, and if it’s a bunch of large separate groups, you can easily be closer to the 2-minute mark. For small photos, where just removing one or adding one person is required, the images can be taken a lot quicker. So, calculate well and allot adequate time for these pictures in your wedding timeline. Also, keep some buffer time to handle unforeseen situations.

3. Pre-inform Family Members

Getting family photos can be like herding cats! To avoid any chaos, inform your family about your photography plans. Let them know about the time you’ve chosen, if the family portraits will be taken before the ceremony or maybe you’ll be doing family photos during the reception. You can print out the family photos section on your timeline and hand over the sheets to your people. This way, they will know when and where they need to be in the photo. We create physical checklists that we send to couples and bring with us to the wedding day to help make the process as smooth as possible.

4. Have a Coordinator

If you hire a wedding coordinator, they can help you get everyone at the photography site when needed. However, if a professional coordinator isn’t in your plan, you can assign the job to that sharp and energetic cousin or aunt of yours. They’ll get family groups together for portraits, not only making the photographer’s life easier, because they will not know anyone, but also ensuring you don’t worry about people not showing up on time. Also, this will save everyone lots of time.

5. It’s Okay to Stop

Some couples feel overwhelmed and get frustrated while working through their large family lists. I call it photo-fatigue. However, you can always catch up later in the evening during the reception. It’s your day. Make sure you have fun instead of exhausting yourself! If you have a huge list of family photos, you can spread it out throughout the day, so it doesn’t get too much to handle at one go.

Experience The Best With Fuller Photography

I’ve been photographing family photos at Pennsylvania area weddings for many years and found that these tips almost always work. And I hope they work out for you too. If you need any help or guidance on anything else wedding-related, you can drop me an email at info@fuller-photography.com or reach out to me on 484-540-5209. For an amazing and unique wedding photography experience, you can contact me right away! To see more of my work, take a look at my Instagram page.

Perfect Family Photos at Weddings tom fuller photography
Perfect Family Photos at Weddings tom fuller photography
Perfect Family Photos at Weddings tom fuller photography
Perfect Family Photos at Weddings tom fuller photography

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