The Quick & Dirty Family Photo List
Not a fan of the drawn out family photo time at weddings?
Neither am I.
If you're looking to spend more time actually hanging out with your friends and family at your wedding rather than awkwardly posing in front of a camera with them, then you've come to right place! Of course, you can completely skip the family photos altogether but sometimes our parents or grandparents pout if we do that, so here it is:
The Quick & Dirty Family Photo List.
A couple important notes, first. This is just a template so you'll need to add your own info and tweak it based on preferences and varying family situations. The order of the list, however, is important because it minimizes the amount of time that people have to wait around and avoids making people jump in and out of photos (both of which are pretty annoying for anyone).
Your whole family - your parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, maybe some cousins
Your family line - your parents and grandparents
Your immediate family - your parents and siblings
Your creators - just your parent(s)
Your new in-laws - your parents and your SO's parents
Partner's creators - just your SO's parent(s)
Partner's immediate family - your SO's parents and siblings
Partner's family line - your SO's parents and grandparents
Partner's whole family - your SO's parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, maybe cousins
That's it! Less than 10 photos and you should be able to satisfy your parent's need for a "nice photo of the whole family together."
So what do you do with this template? Well, names are really helpful when a photographer or planner is trying to wrangle everyone up for their photo. Next to each family member listed, please write their first names (or nicknames, if they prefer) so that we know who to look for and what to call them.
For example:
Holly's whole family - parents (Walter & Skyler), siblings (Junior), grandparents (Jesse & Jane), Aunt and Uncle (Marie & Hank)
Of course, you can make any variations to this template so that it fits your family situation. If you don't want the big ol' family photos, remove them from the list. If you don't have siblings, that's another photo you can remove. If you have step-parents you’d like to include, add them along with the parents (or as two separate lines if there’s any tension there - let me know if that’s the case so that I don’t make a faux pas). As always, do what works best for you!