3 Must-Do’s on How to Work with Your Planner and Photo-video Team
Hey there! This week we are featuring an Austin Wedding Photographer and Videographer team! They do great work and have some great tips on how to work with your vendors, specifically planners and photographers to get great pictures and the most out of their time.
Author: Joshua and Parisa are an Austin Wedding Photographer and Austin Wedding Videographer that captures couples who are down-to-earth, authentic, and joyful. Connect with them on Facebook and Instagram.
At the heart of planning a successful wedding day is a couple’s strong communication with their vendors. In this article we’ll take you through the steps we’ve experienced create the best wedding days for our couples.
1st Must-Do: Create a vision for your wedding day
Our approach to helping our couples create their vision for their photos and videos is all about how they want to feel during different moments on their wedding day. Based on how you want to feel during your wedding day events, you’ll make choices to match those feelings. There are two examples below of what an exciting and romantic wedding ceremony looks like. You’ll notice that the choices each couple made are completely different. Each set of choices reinforced the way they wanted to feel in the moment.
Example 1: An exciting ceremony
Fun, electrifying music while they walk down the aisle
Engaging with guests while they walk down the aisle
The bride laughs and smiles while her father gives her away
Their officiant starts the ceremony off with a joke
Their vows are hilarious filled with jokes
Their guests throw flower petals into the air and cheer during their first kiss
Example 2: A romantic ceremony
Emotional, romantic music while they walk down the aisle
They lock eyes the entire way down the aisle and begin tearing up
The bride and her father hug and cry together when he gives her away. Her whispers well wishes to her fiance and gives him a long hug
The officiant starts the ceremony off with sentimental thoughts and gratefulness for their guests in attendance
When they share their first kiss light music plays in the background and the audience is swept into the moment
Crazy different, right? You can probably imagine how vastly different the decor might be for their ceremonies too even down to the color choices to match the mood. While your planner will help you source materials and plan the design to match your vision, your photo and video team will use your vision to motivate their use of camera angles and technical choices that bring your vision to life.
2nd Must-Do: Brainstorm by asking your wedding planner, photographer, and videographer good questions
Now that you’ve established your vision with your vendors for how you want to feel throughout your day you’re ready to start brainstorming specific ideas for them to execute with you. Here are two examples of what brainstorming can look like with your vendor team.
Brainstorm Example #1:
Let’s say for your first look you want to surprise your fiance with something that will make him feel crazy amounts of joy. You start talking to your photographer about different ideas that will photograph well. You tell your photographer that your fiance is obsessed with his favorite sports team and ask how you could incorporate it. They reply that it’d be funny if all of the groomsmen surprised him with a fake first look decked out in custom sports gear for his favorite team. You love it and your planner loves it too! They help you plan out logistics like working with the bestman to create the custom jerseys.
On your wedding day, your photo-video team takes individual portraits of the groom for 15 minutes while all the guys get dressed for the fake first look surprise. Then your team gets him in position for the first. He’s so excited to see you he can’t stop smiling. You find the perfect vantage point to watch the fake first look and watch as his groomsmen excitedly approach him. The best man taps his shoulder and everyone busts out laughing! It was a huge hit and you have the photos and video to remember it forever. The guys even do a mini photoshoot as if they’re a part of the actual team photos.
Brainstorm Example #2:
Bride to Photographer: We love the idea of incorporating the lake on our wedding day. What are your thoughts on how we could capture that? We want it to be fun!
Photographer: Oh my gosh. Love that. Do you know if there’s a boat we could use to take you guys out on the water?
Bride: I don’t know but I can find out!
*She contacts her planner.
Planner: I’ll look into it! That sounds so fun!
*The planner finds a local boat rental spot near the venue. There are several options within your budget and you could even rent it the day before your wedding too before your rehearsal dinner.
Videographer: Woah! This sounds uh-mazing. I’m already imagining how cool you guys will look in your wedding attire cruising around the lake. We’ll totally use our drone for some shots too! Here’s another idea. You could also rent out the boat the day before and take your bridal party out on the lake for the day. We could make a documentary film for you capturing the experience and bring our GoPro for everyone to use. We could even take half an hour to swim underwater with you and capture some beautiful footage underwater.
Photographer: *jaw drops after hearing the videographer’s idea* Girl, I am 100% down for underwater photography and capturing you guys with your friends on the boat! Shooting underwater photos has been a dream goal of mine! I’m going to send you my Pinterest board of underwater photo ideas. You’re going to love them.
Even though you might not have a lake by your venue or your fiance might not be into sports, we hope these illustrate what’s possible if you connect and brainstorm with your vendor team! Asking good questions to bring out their creativity will produce amazing results!
3rd Must-Do: Dedicate space on your timeline for both your photo and your video team to capture portraits
Once you have a few unique ideas for your wedding day planned and inserted into your timeline like the ones above, you’ll be ready to plan your portrait sessions. Here are some of our favorite times to shoot those:
- Bridal photos after you are in your dress.
- Groom photos after he’s in his suit. This is a great way to make sure he gets ready on time (lol).
- Portraits after your First Look. Feel free to choose between this one and the next one if you’re running short on time.
- Portraits after your ceremony. Since these are right after you tie the knot, they are usually your most joyful-looking photos!
- Golden Hour. This is when we normally have enough time to travel around the best spots of your venue. It’s also when there’s the best lighting of the day!
For all of these sessions In your timeline, make sure you give enough time to both your photo and video team to capture what they need. It’s important that both teams get to shoot with you and your fiance 1-on-1 to get the best angles and you guys interacting with their main camera a few times. Otherwise, your gallery and wedding film will include content where your focus clearly wasn’t on their camera, disrupting the flow of the story. You can easily avoid this by working with your planner on establishing periods in your timeline for both your photographer and your videographer to work with you.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped illustrate how you can proactively create your dream wedding day through working with your vendor team. If you use the guidelines we know you’ll be super happy with the results. 🙂
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