Family formals are certainly one of the staple events of a wedding day. As much as your wedding is a celebration of your love, it’s also a coming together of two families, and formals are the long standing tradition of capturing a snapshot, literally, of this time in your family’s history.

We believe that planning is essential to making this part of the day flow smoothly. We’d estimate that 75% of the cases where the wedding timeline gets behind, it’s because the family formals went long post ceremony. When the formals go long, it’s the couple and wedding party photo time that get the chopping block to keep dinner and the rest of the night on schedule. Our number one goal is to get great photos of you two on your wedding day, so we like to do everything we can to keep the timeline as close as possible to planned. We mention a few ways to help decompress this part of the day in our timeline planning page, so be sure to check that out too. If things do get behind, we are extremely adaptable and will do everything within our power to come up with creative ways of flexing with the timeline we’re on. 

After the ceremony finishes, your guests are ready to party! Be sure to let family members know ahead of time if they’ll be in the family formals so they’ll know to hang around at the ceremony site. When family members wander off for a drink or an hors d’orve, that’s when we have to send a search and rescue mission to bring them back. If this happens for several groups or last minute ideas for arrangement come up, we’re all scrambling to reunite the group.

We have a few recommendations to help keep family formals fun, easy, and efficient. A well organized group, even with a lot of different arrangements can go very quickly if orchestrated properly.

1. Prepare a list of arrangements with names so we can call out to people by name. It helps to organize groups one family side at a time.

2. Please directly inform each person ahead of time who is part of the formals that they should stay in ceremony area after the ceremony is finished.

3. Have waitstaff bring drinks and hors d'orves to the portrait area so people can get refreshments without having to go anywhere.

4. If there’s a willing member of your family who would like to be the point person on calling out groups, that is very helpful since they likely know all the people on your list.

5. Consider if a group should be part of the formal portrait time or if you would just like a photo with them at some point during the reception. We still get lots of great group portraits throughout the night outside of formal portrait time, so don’t feel like you need to fit everyone in there.

6. A well orchestrated, cooperative group can go really smoothly. To do portraits of parents, parents plus siblings, plus grandparents, a big extended family group, for both sides, on average takes about 20 minutes. You know your family best and how this time may go, consider that as well when planning the allotted time for formals and wedding party photos.