Typical Wedding Day...

I've been asked in the past what the typical wedding day is like for me. Actually, it's more of a question of what is a typical wedding weekend like for me! Here it is for a single wedding weekend:

Friday night: Charge up all batteries and double check all equipment. Go to bed around 12:00 midnight.

Saturday morning:
1. Wake up around 9 AM. Take a shower, get dressed for the wedding, print out driving directions from Microsoft Streets and Trips and also Mapquest.
2. Double check all equipment again and re-read all my notes on the wedding and load everything into my car.
3. Pack a cooler full of water bottles (I go through A LOT of water during a wedding day!!)
4. Pack a sack dinner (in the event food is not provided at the wedding)
5. Go to the wedding.

Saturday Evening:

1. Return home often between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM depending on the length of the wedding.
2. Take a shower.
3. Upload all image files from the Compact Flash cards to my desktop computer.
4. Charge all batteries.
5. Burn a backup copy of all image files from the computer to DVD.
6. Review the images shot from the wedding (can't go to bed until I do this!!)
7. Go to bed - often around 3:00 or 4:00 AM.

Sunday Morning:

1. Wake up around 8:00 AM (after only about 4 or 5 hours of sleep)
2. Go to church Worship Team practice at 8:45 AM (I play guitar at church)
3. Stay at church until 12:15 PM
4. Go home and crash!!

There are weekends where I shoot two weddings - one per day for two days in a row. I never accept three weddings per weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday.) That would be too much! Often it's Friday / Saturday weddings or Saturday / Sunday weddings. Somehow, I never seem to get a Friday / Sunday wedding...

Obviously, by the end of a two day wedding weekend, I'm beat! It takes the entire week to recouperate from working two solid days at weddings. I'm on my feet literally all day and carrying around 1-3 very heavy cameras and a waistbelt of lenses and accessories. Often I don't get to sit even for a minute. But I do try to take a slight break during dinner hour because nobody really wants photos of people eating! So I get maybe an hour break. Afterwards, it's a full evening of photographing dancing and other events of the reception.

By the time I get in my car to go home, I'm dead tired. It's very tough on the body.

By Monday, I'm back on the computer, Photoshopping all the images. Often I'll start late on Monday after getting some rest. But I'll be working on those images usually from when I wake up (usually around 7:00 AM) until I go to bed - often 1 or 2 AM.

It's a lot tougher than most people think, being a wedding photographer. I will often put in 40-50 hours of work for a typical wedding, so it's more than just shooting a wedding on a Saturday. Consultations and Photoshop work, as well as visits to the print lab often take up the majority of my work week. Still, I enjoy it and that's more than most people can say about their jobs!