I think the priority for your wedding day morning should be relaxation and joy and not stress or making sure you have everything timed out to the exact minute. That being said, you do need kind of an order of events or a schedule for what’s going on the morning of your wedding because you’re usually not alone or not in a small group of people that are nimble and easy to get through those several very important hours. You often have the entire wedding party to account for both bridesmaids and grimsmen the couple. The parents are often involved in the morning activities and then at some point in your morning, all of your vendors show up with all their supplies or their services. So typically what my clients wedding day mornings look like is hair and makeup starts decently early. Obviously depends on what time your ceremony is, but I’ve seen hair and makeup start anywhere between 07:00 A.m. And noon. Depends how many people you have, if the hair and makeup people are coming to your hotel room or your house, or if you’re going to their salon, and then how long the hair and makeup artists say they need per application or per hairdo. I’ve seen that range anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes. So make sure you know how long they’re expecting to have on the day of. Always make sure you have food for everyone while they’re getting ready, both the bridesmaids and groomsmen or anyone else around during the morning. I know you want to look your best and you’re in this pretty dress and you’re going to be photo taken all day, but you have to eat something, otherwise you’re going to end up passing out in your ceremony or throwing up before your reception is even over. So hair and makeup once that is done, a lot of my clients do like the pajama photos if all their girls were in matching pajamas, maybe pop some champagne or throw confetti for some cute photos when hair and makeup is done but you’re still in your pajamas. And then I usually have the bridesmaids get dressed first and then if the bride and groom exchange like letters or little gifts that she might want to open in private, I’ll have her do that. Then if she’s okay doing that in her pajamas or like in her robe for the morning, we can do it later if she wants to do it in her wedding dress. If it’s being photographed or videographed. After the bridesmaids are dressed, the bride starts getting dressed. Because the bride getting dressed usually always includes the bride’s mom or the maid of honor or sister of some sort, both for the sentimentality of the moment and also usually physical assistance of getting into the dress and buttoning it up. So around that time I usually have photo and video already arrived, usually just when hair and makeup is ending. The bride might want some photos of the hair and makeup finishing, but definitely want those PJ photos. And then the bride getting into her dress with her mom or sister or something. If you want a lot of detail shots like those flat lay images of your invitation and the rings and the perfume bottle and all that, those usually need to happen before any of photos of your bridesmaids and you getting in your dress again, talk to your photographer. They may need 20 minutes for that. They may want an hour for that. Once the bride is in her dress, sometimes they do a first look with all their bridesmaids, a first look with a dad or grandpa, brother, really. Anyone else important that they want to have a moment with to show the big outfit at that point? What happens next between then and the ceremony? Depends if you’re doing a first look or not. If you are doing a first look, we usually do first look, couple photos and then wedding party photos. Especially if you have two photographers you can split and do bridesmaids and groomsmen at the same time. And then if you’re not doing a first look after everyone’s dressed, you would just do photos with your bridesmaids and then head to the ceremony. The timing of all that and how long each one takes is very nuanced. It depends where you’re getting ready, where the other half of the wedding party is getting ready, how far away you are from your ceremony venue, et cetera, et cetera. The guy’s schedule is way easier. They don’t have hair and makeup, but they also need to eat something. Everyone needs to make sure they’re not drunk before the ceremony. And then the guys just need to be dressed and ready, which still takes a surprising amount of time, like girls think about getting dressed as more. We usually schedule 30 minutes for bridesmaids to go get dressed and guys usually don’t expect that. They also need to budget that amount of time to get into everything in their outfit. But.

So you think you can’t afford a wedding planner, but let me ask you this. When was the last time that you did something for the first time and you were good at it, right? Even if this is your second or even third time getting married, right? There are some things that can fall through the cracks. And as a wedding planner, I am telling you this because I started a wedding planning company, because when I got married and my co owners got married, we did not have wedding planners. And there were some things that got missed and we wished went differently if we would have just had a good wedding planner. Now as planners, now we have couples that have $5,000 budgets or $10,000 budgets and still have a decent guest size, and they are hiring us at $1,500, $3,000, $5,000. And that’s picking up that portion of their budget because the value is so great. Like a good wedding planner will actually save you money and will save you an incredible amount of time and stress. That being said, if there is no way that you can figure out how to factor in a wedding planner to help with your day, there are resources that you can get. I would do a ton of research online, download all the lists that you can download, ask everyone you know who’s been married, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they wish would have gone differently, what ran smoothly, and just get as much experience from them as you can. There’s a lot of online resources. There are Facebook groups now where brides are asking each other if they can be guests to each other’s weddings and make new friends. And you can go to this event and kind of get that feel for how a wedding flows. Even just getting to one or two weddings before your event is going to be a massive help. Shameless Plug if you absolutely can’t hire a wedding planner and you know that you need help, we created an e journal that is specifically geared to get you all of the knowledge that a wedding planner would have so that you know which questions to ask. So this isn’t your normal journal where it’s like, put your bridal party here and put your vendors here. This is 55 pages of questions that we would ask you if we were your wedding planner to make you think about every single aspect of the day that needs to happen. And hopefully we’ll give you the knowledge that you need to plan your day and make sure that none of the snafus that typically happen, right? So if you’re interested in that, it’s called winning your wedding planning. It’s that best weddingplanningjournal.com, and I hope that you check it out. Whatever happens, my number one piece of advice that I give to every couple is get a wedding planner. But I hope that you find the solution that works for you and that your day runs super smoothly.