17 Essential Wedding Tips To Have A Great Dayton Wedding & Reception
May 2, 2024
Tips To Have The Best Wedding Day Possible
I have assembled 17 essential wedding day tips to have a successful wedding. I have photographed 245 weddings since 2007 and have collected tips along the way. To help make your big day better, I want to share these with you. As with any suggestion, take it with a grain of salt. These are just based on thousands of hours of event photography.
“Kevin is wonderful, caught so much, had a great ideas, excellent pacing, and managed to be everywhere but was never in the way. Couldn’t recommend enough!”
— Steph (2023 Tri-State Warbird Museum Wedding)
My Top 3 Essential Essential Tips Before You Hire A Photographer
- Hire a professional
- Wedding professionals likely run a legitimate business, have vast experience, and know how to handle anything that comes their way. You will want to hire someone with insurance, backups, and rigid business practices. This will ensure you are getting a great business. Then, if you like the photos and you vibe well with the photographer, hire them!
- Get a contract
- Contracts ensure you get the goods and services you paid for while protecting the vendor. Make sure to sign and date the contract to make it legal. Many vendors, including myself, use digital or online contracts. Both the wedding couple and I can sign the contract within minutes. It can protect you in the event the photographer backs out or doesn’t show up.
- Read reviews
- Search wedding websites and Google to see what others say about your vendors. Don’t rely solely on reviews provided by wedding vendors. Pay special attention to when the reviews were published. Be wary of a vendor without reviews in a year or more. This can mean they haven’t been operating for a long time. A good practice is to check at least a few review sites to ensure the reviews are similar in content.
Three Other Highly Valuable Pre-Wedding Tips To Keep You Safe
- Monitor social media
- Check the wedding vendor’s social media (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) to ensure it is updated regularly and recently. A vendor who is not updating social media may be neglecting other parts of their business. Check with them if you feel like something is off. For my business, I do not use TikTok, but I do use the others. They are regularly updated.
- Too good to be true
- As with everything in life, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Doing your wedding homework will ensure you get a high-quality professional wedding vendor. A gut instinct will often lead you in the right direction.
- Sales tax
- In Ohio, your photographer is legally required to collect sales tax. If a photographer is not charging sales tax, please verify with them that it is included in your package. No one wants their photographer to go out of business due to a tax violation.
Five Wedding Prep Tips To Ensure A Smooth And Efficient Day
- ·Have a schedule and stick to it
- Your wedding photographer will appreciate it. Be sure to build in buffer time for when things go long. You will be happy you did.
- 6-hour wedding day timeline
- 8-hour wedding day timeline
- 10-hour wedding day timeline
- 12-hour wedding day timeline
- Stay on track with your timeline
- Notoriously late people can kill your timeline. When you know the time you’ll need them, give them a start time that is 30-60 minutes before. Also, let them know they need to stay at the photo location. A needed person who wanders away from the area can seriously slow down the photo session.
- Dole out responsibilities
- Assign a wedding guest (non-wedding party) to move all wedding materials from the ceremony location to the reception. The wedding party will be busy with many other tasks throughout the day. I love it when wedding couples recruit aunts and uncles to help move materials.
- Get them to stay
- Anyone who will be in the formal photos needs to stick around for the formal photos. Let them know ahead of time or have someone remind them. This was #2 above, but from a photographer’s standpoint, this is so important. Many weddings I have photographed have been slowed down due to people leaving before we are done.
- Planning is key
- Work out a plan with the DJ before your day. A good emcee or DJ should have the grand entrance order and pronunciations ready when you arrive at the reception. You don’t want to be telling the DJ how to pronounce everyone’s name just before walking into the reception.
Six Tips To Have A Great Wedding Reception
I often feel I have seen it all at the 240+ weddings I have photographed. Then, I go to my next wedding only to discover something that makes me say, “I have never seen this before.” Here is a list of tips that help make the wedding reception successful. These may also be money-saving tips you can use for your wedding day.
- Sit Elderly Guests Away From The DJ
- Often, at weddings, the table for the grandparents is directly in front of the DJ speakers. This often annoys the grandparents and can make them leave the reception early. If getting them to leave early, then go for it. LOL
- Have An Efficient Timeline That Leaves Extra Time For The Unexpected
- The biggest time-waster at wedding receptions is large gaps of unused time during the reception. Once dinner is done, toasts and dances should commence immediately. Guests will start to leave during lulls in the action. Get to the fun stuff, dinner and dancing, as quickly as you can. Hiring a professional DJ who can keep things moving will make this happen.
- Don’t Buy Wedding Cake For Every Guest
- I suggest ordering half of what you think you will need. There are always dozens of pieces left over. Save money and don’t buy so much cake.
- Don’t Waste Time Between Arriving At Reception And Being Announced
- Quite often, a great deal of time is wasted at the reception while the DJ prepares the wedding party. Ensure the DJ knows all bridal party pairings, entrance orders, and pronunciations before the wedding. You should show up at the reception ready to walk in. The DJ should be ready to introduce you, too.
- Keep The Dollar Dance Time To A Minimum
- The dollar dance, while awesome for some extra honeymoon cash, can run very long. Insist that the bridal party members who are taking the money limit to dances to 20-30 seconds at most. Too many times the same person is dancing with the bride for 60-90 seconds. Although I don’t see this much anymore, keep them short. You’ll make more money!
- Bonus Tip
- Please keep all kids off the dance floor for the special dances and bouquet toss. Also, a kid can ruin the garter removal tradition by being in the photos. #Awkward
