How to Stay in the Moment on Your Wedding Day
The best way to guarantee epic documentary-style wedding photos that are filled with emotion and joy is to make sure you are fully present throughout the day. It’s easy to be distracted by all of the little last minute tasks, by messages blowing up your phone, and just the general energy of the day. Here are ways to ensure you can fully take in all the wonderful moments of your wedding.
Hire a Planner
Seriously—one of the best ways to ensure you can really focus on the wedding day and all the people surrounding you is to have someone else there who is being paid to take care of the little details: making sure the flower delivery is in the right location, setting up tables, organizing the seating chart, etc. Even if you aren’t using a full-time wedding planner, I always recommend bringing in a month-of-coordinator because it takes so many small tasks off your own list for the day of the event.
Hide Your Phones
Let folks know that you will not be answering texts/calls/social media messages on your wedding day. Then pass your phone to a wedding party member or friend and give them your passcode just in case of an emergency or actual pressing need. You’d be shocked at how often I see guests call/message the people getting married with questions like, “What time should I be there again?” or “Do you like the brown shoes or the pink?”—basically all sorts of things that don’t really matter or that have already been shared via invitations/wedding websites/pre-wedding timelines passed out at the rehearsal. Letting someone else field those messages frees up your mind for the actual task at hand—enjoying the day. You can always go back the next day to read the real messages of love and support sent your way.
And request your crew keeps their phones out of sight, too.
There’s a lot of coordination that needs to happen on a wedding day, so I know how hard it is for your wedding party and immediate family members to put away their own phones. They probably also want to capture some photos of the day for themselves, too. This is all ok, but maybe request that your loved ones don’t post on social media until after the reception or to try to only answer messages that are relevant to the day if at all possible, just so they can be in the moment right along side of you, as opposed to being distracted by non-important work messages or scrolling social media.
Vow Books/Speech Books
It’s so amazing that we can have our thoughts written out made easily accessible through our phones—for speeches or our wedding vows. Though I’d recommend using your Notes feature to keep this speech at the ready just in case, it tends to give a much more connected feeling (in person and in the photos later on) when partners read their vows from a vow book or a beautifully written page or the like, instead of off of their cell phones. I recommend the same for anyone giving a toast at the reception.
Hold Hands and Don’t Let Go During the Reception
There are so many folks surrounding you at the reception—it’s awesome and part of the reason you threw this whole shebang to begin with! But it can also make it really easy for you to be separated from your partner, which in turn can mean that you end up spending a good chunk of the night without each other. Try to make a pact ahead of time that you will stick together as you greet and celebrate with your guests as much as possible. You can even task a friend with being your wrangler—helping to pull you to back together if you are separated too long during the party.
Schedule Buffer Time
With all of the moving pieces, it’s easy for things to run behind on a wedding day. If you are running late for the ceremony or whatever the next step of the day is, it can cause a lot of stress. This makes you focused on your watch and not your experience in the moment. When scheduling your timeline, give extra time throughout to give yourself a buffer for when things go off-track. Some really important spots to add this buffer time is for hair and make-up, travel between locations, and photos happening before the ceremony. And if things DO run on time, you’ve just got a little extra space to hang with your loved ones.
Plan for a Few Minutes of Alone Time
The wedding party is often about all of the folks you love coming together in one place. So much of the day is spent surrounded by all of these amazing people. But it can be nice to have at least a few minutes of time alone for you two. You could easily add this immediately before or after the ceremony. I like to suggest that couples do the portrait portion of the day alone as well—it’s an extra bit of time to just hold onto each other and revel in your joy side-by-side.
Plan Ahead for Touchstone Moments
It’s really easy for the whole day to pass in a blur. Before the wedding day, sit down together and talk about a few key moments you really want to hold onto—think Pam and Jim on The Office taking their mental snapshots. Something like: looking at each other as you’re walking into the ceremony, looking out and taking in all of your guests during the ceremony and the reception, a quiet moment with a parent or best friend in the midst of the madness. Once you hit these points in the day, this can help you to remember to slow down, take a deep breath, and really experience all the senses of that moment, and this helps you hold onto these senses as you look back on the day for years to come.