TFYP 05 | Stress vs. Celebration
Your wedding day is naturally a whirlwind due to the people, the schedule, the paparazzi (aka: your photographer and videographer teams), and the fact that you’re marrying the love of your life. This whirlwind can actually be fun and celebratory, or it can be stressful and busy. But there’s one major portion of your day that can either add to the stress or help create the celebratory environment, and most people don’t even realize it.
Curious what that is?
The answer: how and where you begin the day getting ready.
In our experience, the more a bride and/or groom have to run around town from location to location, the less relaxed they are by the time they arrive to the ceremony. The constant movement from place to place creates pressure on the timeline, thus adding stress, creating distraction, and decreasing space and time to enjoy and celebrate (bonus tip: the more you’re stuck in transportation, the more your photographer and videographer are stuck in transportation, which can often lead to less actual photo & video coverage for your day). To avoid all of this chaos, we suggest bringing everything (aka: everyone) to you.
First, choose a space to get ready; one location for each of you.
A getting ready location should be a place that’s calming, full of light, and in close proximity to your venue. Don’t be afraid to ask your venue if they have spaces for getting ready; beginning your day in the same location as you’ll be tying the knot allows for the optimal day of relaxation. If your venue doesn’t provide these spaces, consider renting rooms at a nearby hotel, or ask a friend/relative that may be close to use their home.
Second, skip the trip to the salon and hire the hairstylist/barber and makeup artist to come to you.
This will save you a tremendous amount of time in your schedule as you won’t have to factor in the drive to and from a salon, won’t have to think about scheduling appointments and how everyone is going to get there nor worry about the need of handing out multiple sets of directions. It is uncommon to book a salon completely for your own wedding party, so you will be starting your wedding morning with multiple other strangers around (uh, which is usually other wedding parties), not to mention there is often time setbacks and delays as the salon is having to deal with multiple other clients, morning walk-ins, and phone calls. Having the stylists come to you allows them to give you their 100% undivided attention. Your own space will naturally be more quiet and calm, you will get to choose the music and whether or not to wear shoes (trust us, these are game changers), not to mention the almost endless multiple other perks including (but not limited to) having your own bathroom, a cleaner space for photos and video without strangers in the background, and not fighting other wedding parties for places to sit and sip champagne.
Last, make sure all of your day-of needs are in this one place. Having a single location to be the morning of your wedding creates far less opportunities to forget something. Too often we see brides leaving their jewelry at the salon, the bouquet at their home, and their something blue in someones car (but whose car?!). That is just far too much chaos that is so easily avoidable. By having one place to be for getting ready, all of your belongings will be there, all of your people will be there, and all of the space will be available for allowing the excitement to build (much better than the alternative: your stress and anxiety levels building).
Questions/thoughts on anything concerning the getting ready process from a photographers perspective? We want to hear! Leave some words below.
XO,
The Vafa’s