Wedding photographers wear many hats, and as we are often with the bride and groom from the beginning to the end of their wedding day, we sometimes find ourselves taking on the role of a planner or day-of-coordinator. Over the years we’ve learned that time management is one of the most important aspects of your wedding day, and poor time management can create a lot of stress on both the bride and groom—the last thing we want our couples to feel as stress and anxiety are emotions to mask when you’re being photographed. To keep your wedding day low-stress and to keep smiles on everyone’s faces, here are some tips that we have learned about managing your wedding day.

1) Add slack to your schedule
Every wedding that I have photographed has run late, at some point in the day. Sometimes it’s 5 minutes. Sometimes it’s 1.5 hours. On your wedding day, things just tend to take longer than you’d expect. It’s helpful to add an extra 15 minutes to each part of your day, just in case. The unexpected has a way of happening during weddings, so be ready with some added buffer time to keep you on time, not in a rush, and most important, minimize any anxiety or stress.

2) Have a family member wrangle your key family and friends for portraits
Because larger group portraits take longer to set up and photograph, we find that wedding guests have a tendency to wander off during portrait time. Ask a reliable family member (or 2!) to be in charge of finding your important guests and keeping them together for portraits. A week before your wedding, give your wrangler a list of of the key people who you want for portraits. This will help him know who’s where they need to be and who’s missing.

Bonus tip: Don’t forget to share your portrait list with your photographer! This will ensure no one is left out of portrait hour.

3) Limit the number of portraits
Your wedding day is one of the only times when you’ll have all of your family and friends together in one place, so we understand the desire to want a portrait with everyone. Remember, though, formal group portraits are very time consuming, and let’s be honest, are you really going to frame and hang that picture of you and your college roommate’s boyfriend or you and your cousin twice removed? We encourage couples to really hone in on your most important groups for formal portraits, remembering that there are tons of opportunities throughout your wedding for candid photos of you with everyone else. To help plan your portraits, try breaking down your list into “must have” and “would be nice” sections. This way, if you’re running late on your wedding day, you’ll know which portraits to cut to save you time and stress.

4) Plan for a second portrait hour
It’s getting late in the day and you are already an hour or more behind schedule? What do you do? If you plan for a second portrait session in advance, you can simply skip your initial portrait session and catch up in your schedule knowing you have another time in the day planned for portraits. This is also a great way to break up your portraits, splitting them throughout the day versus spending long blocks of time just taking pictures. Think about doing some portraits before your ceremony, some during cocktail hour, and some after dinner. There’s 3 sessions right there!

5) Hire a wedding planner or day-of-coordinator
At the end of the day, there is nothing like a good planner or coordinator to help your wedding day run smoothly. Hire someone else to take over your stress. After all, it is your wedding day!

Also, check out some of our tips for getting better Getting Ready Photos.