One of the staples of a wedding day are the family photos. Think about it, outside of holidays you never really get all of your family members together in one place, especially for a celebration of your love!!✨ That’s what makes family photos so common AND so important as a part of your wedding day. But what all goes into getting the perfect family photos at your wedding? While it may seem like a simple answer, there are actually quite a few things you’ll want to plan out and do to make sure they’re taken efficiently. So let’s talk about them! Here are my top 5 tips for planning out your family photos list on your wedding day.

A bride and groom stand side by side with members of their families on either side of them all smiling at the camera

1. Keep it Simple

First and foremost: keep. It. Simple. You only get to experience your wedding day once, and as important as family photos are, there are SO many other parts of your wedding day that you’ll want to enjoy. Keeping your list of family photos on the simpler side will help keep your wedding day running smoothly and efficiently. Your wedding timeline only has so much wiggle room, so try not to create a photo list with too many variations. When you keep your list simple you keep the stress to a minimum, which is what you want for your wedding day!

2. Start With Larger Groups and Subtract

Going along with the idea of keeping things simple, this trick will help you to minimize the swapping and wrangling of your guests! Start with a large group for your first photo, and then move on to smaller group photos with members from the larger main group. For example, if you’re taking a photo with the bride’s family first then have one of the bride and grandparents afterward, then the cousins, and so on. The last thing you want to be doing is running around trying to find people who have wandered off when you need them for a photo!!

A bride and groom pose for a family photo with members of their family on either side of them all smiling at the camera at their ceremony space

3. Let Them Know Ahead of Time

This one is SO important for keeping people on track and where they need to be! It’s to be expected with a wedding day that there will be a family photo taken. The smaller, more sectioned group photos are more up in the air, so let those people know that you need them to be around after the main family photo. Let them know how many photos they’ll be in and who they’ll be with so they can help keep themselves and other family members on track. Bonus points if you let them know via text or email before the wedding day and then AGAIN earlier on during your wedding day!

4. Give Your Photographer the List

This step is HUGE for your sanity!🤩 Once you have your list of family photos and their variations lined out send them over to your photographer (me!) As a Chicago wedding photographer, I’ve become quite accustomed to wrangling family members and getting them in and out of photos efficiently so that we can keep things moving.

One important thing to keep in mind and make note of when making your list is any family members that struggle with moving around, or children that have less patience for photos. If your grandma can only get around in a wheelchair we need to plan around that and decide on a location that is accessible to her! I’ll keep your list of family photos on hand the day of your wedding so that I can call out who’s in and who’s out with each photo so we can knock them out one after the other and get you on to the party!!

5. Trust Your Photographer

When planning out your family photo list we’ll also plan out where to take those family photos. While we will try and stick to this plan, I cannot stress this enough that you need to trust your photographer. If the lighting isn’t what we expected, or there’s something nearby that has a better backdrop for these photos, trust your photographer in their recommendation. Like I mentioned earlier on in this blog, these photos are SO special and important, they deserve to be done with the best possible lighting and setting available. This is where my years of experience as a wedding photographer comes in handy as I’ll be able to quickly let you know if we can go with the initial location plan, or if there’s another location nearby that will be a better fit!!

A bride smiles for a photo with 3 members of her family, one of which is a young girl sho is yelling while holding the bouquet above her head

What did I tell you?! As you can see, there are actually quite a few different things you’ll want to consider and plan out when thinking about the family photos you want on your wedding day. Lucky for you with this list in hand, and with the help of your wedding photographer you’ll be ready for your family photos and all their different variations! Need a photographer for your wedding day still? Head to my contact page to send me an inquiry, and if you’d like to see more of my work be sure to check out my blog and Instagram!