Stress free group photos

If you’re working with me – I will have sold you on the whole idea of swift, straight forward group photos – and here’s how we make it happen.

Here’s it in a nutshell if you don’t want to read the whole thing:

Choose no more than 8 groups

Get someone you trust to round up the people you need

Boom!

We’ve all been to weddings where they’ve been taking group photos for almost all of the drinks hour with every conceivable combination of people – let’s not be doing that.

With group photos, it’s frequently not taking the photos that takes up the time, but gathering everyone together – Aunt Susan has always wondered off to the bar, and there will always be someone feeding a baby. I’d allow up to 5-10 mins for each photo, especially if they’re totally distinct groups of people. So you can soon see how much time it can start to take up if you want to add more group photos. It’s absolutely your wedding, but it’s important that you know the trade off.

I should also add that everything is bespoke – I don’t take a cookie cutter approach so any of the examples here are just to get you thinking about how it might work, and how it can be as swift and efficient as possible, so you can spend the day having maximum amounts of fun. 

Preparation is key 

First off – spend some time together thinking about who you want to include, and who’s the most important to you. Every family looks different so I never generalise but I would suggest you make sure you include your immediate families – parents, siblings, grandparents; and perhaps partners of siblings – maybe Aunts and Uncles if you’re close to them; and then your best people.

Allocate some helpers

I always suggest you pick some people to help – the best helpers are fairly assertive (teachers, events peeps or other people whos job it is to organise people are always the best at this) and know your family members – maybe one person from each side. I’ll liaise with them to make sure everyone is in the right place at the right time. Having them to make sure people are in the right place at the right time means that I can focus on taking the photos, and makes the whole process so much swifter.

When to do groups

I usually suggest doing these at your reception venue, or if you’re at one venue all day, during your drinks reception. 

Here’s a couple of examples – but we’ll work out exactly how that’s going to look when we discuss your day and create a bespoke plan that makes the best use of your individual timings and locations.

You’re getting married at a London Town Hall and onto a restaurant 

We’ll come out, throw confetti, do a big photo of everyone (Town Hall steps normally work perfectly for this) and then aim to do groups straight after. Some Town Halls can be so busy (Islington especially) that attempting to do groups outside on the steps is pretty futile!

You’re getting married at a venue like the Asylum Chapel and will have drinks there afterwards before moving on.

You’ll come out, throw confetti – we’ll do a group photos of everyone. Then everyone can grab a drink, allow all the nervous energy to dissipate and we can start the group photos about 25/30 mins into the reception.

You’re getting married at a church and then onto a marquee

I’m going to recommend doing the groups at the reception. For some reasons church yards are always stupidly bright, and trying to get everyone to hear me above ringing bells is not especially fun!

You’re at the same venue all day

Then it’s super easy and I recommend you get married, do confetti, and then grab a drink, say hello, get hugged and then we can get started about 25 mins in.

If it’s raining

Then I’ll come up with a plan – we can either dodge the showers, or find somewhere lovely inside. In fact, sometimes for winter weddings I’ll suggest this anyway so everyone can stay cosy. 

For more advice on what to do when it rains – check out this blog post.

The list.

Here’s my recommended group list – everyone os different, so feel free to use this as a basis and adapt it for things like divorced parents, your own children, step parents and the like.

• Couple and person A’s immediate family (e.g. parents and siblings)

• Couple and Person A’s extended family (this might include parents, siblings, sibling’s partners and children, grandparents etc)

• Couple and person B’s immediate family (e.g. parents and siblings)

• Couple and Person B’s extended family (this might include parents, siblings, sibling’s partners and children, grandparents etc)

• Both sets of parents with couple

• Person A’s people (e.g. brides people)

• Person B’s people (e.g. ushers)

• The two above together

How we’re going to make it swift AF

In an ideal situation – we’d gather everyone we need in all the photos, so they’re all waiting in the wings for me to call their names and get them in the photo. That’s how you get all the groups done in 15-20 minutes. 

if that’s not possible I’d suggest breaking it into ‘blocks’ of people and send them all out together. E.g. in the above example list, although there are 8 photos – there’s only really 3 groups of people. Person A’s family, Person B’s family and the bridal party. Breaking it down into those blocks makes it easier to round everyone up.

Put names on the form you complete for me.

I suggest you fill in the form as below, to ensure that people who think they should be included but you don’t want to include, aren’t called. Hello again Aunt Susan.

1. Jo and Joe and Jo’s immediate family – Tom Smith, Dick Smith, Harry Smith 

Let important people know 

It might be worth having a brief conversation with your family members to let them know what to expect e.g. if your parents are expecting there to be a large number of group photos, explain about my candid natural approach, that you want to keep the day fun and maybe allow them to suggest one photo they’d like to include so they don’t feel upset on the day.