Advice for Shooting 3 Back to Back Weddings // tips for photographers
As a wedding photographer, you can expect to shoot doubles — two back to back weddings a weekend — often. It's just the name of the game in my opinion. I'm sure there are some out there who say they are only shooting one per weekend, but dang that's hard for me, it's too difficult to turn down awesome weddings and fantastic couples!
The thing I so naively didn't anticipate for the longest time though, was shooting THREE back to back weddings. And then, it happened. I booked a Sunday wedding a year and a half in advance. A month later, I booked the Friday of that weekend. And then it hit me....there's no way I wouldn't at least get an inquiry for that Saturday date! Sure enough, multiple came in. And ultimately, though slightly nervous about shooting 3 back to back weddings, I decided to give it a try. How else could I know how or what it would be like unless I tried it!
After surviving my first ever triple header, I felt like I learned some stuff! So if you're a photographer wondering if you should take on a triple, just a curious bystander, or - in all likelihood - this particular friend of mine who reads all my blog posts because she's awesome as heck (hi Plunkett!!) — Here is my advice on the matter!
don’t do it. LOLOL I kid, I kid, kinda.
BUT FOR REAL THOUGH, HERE’S MY ADVICE! -
1. Drink way (like way) more water than you think you even need
- Seems easy, right? Dude I'm talking drown yourself. You should always be making sure you are hydrated before a wedding, but when there's three on your horizon....drink water like you've never drank water in your life! Drink it in the days leading up to your triple header. Drink a ton the morning of each. Drink as much as you can during each wedding day. And go to bed with a sloshing belly of water at the end of each night!! Sidenote: You’ll probably be far too tired to actually get up and use the restroom anyways, so go nuts! lol2. DON'T go get yourself a massage the next day (or even two days later)
- Sounds like such a good idea, even a nice little reward huh? Literally that's what I thought. What I realized was that after shooting 3 back to back weddings, my muscles had sore muscles, and you think it's bad until you have a stranger pressing into them for an hour and a half — the next day, I felt like I had been SLAMMED BY A BUS. Sore muscles don't need that sort of intense rubbing and pressure so soon after they've been overworked. (apparently).3. Focus on one at a time
- I knew before I dove into all three of those weddings that if I started letting myself think, on night one, about how I gotta get up and do all this again tomorrow...I'd be in trouble. For each wedding I only focused on that wedding. When I got tired and exhausted, or my feet were throbbing — I wouldn't dare let my mind say "ha and you gotta do this again tomorrow!", I would quickly divert my mind toward something more positive — like the cake table.4. Set aside that time for your memory cards
- What I mean by that is, unless you have an endless supply of memory cards, and hey maybe you do — if so, awesome! But if not, remember that at the end of each wedding, you’ll be coming home and you’ll need to take the time to dump those cards! For me, I dumped each stack of cards after each of my 3 back-to-back weddings, backed those images up in a second place, and then formatted those cards so that I could use them again the next day. Coming home after 8, 9, 10+ hours and knowing you gotta get up the next day and do it again — trust me, the last thing you’ll want to do is dump cards and back up images… Buttt…. you gotta :)5. Trust the editing time
- Know that you pretty much aren’t going to be able to get these weddings edited all at the same time, even though they each happened 24 hours apart! I like to focus on one wedding at a time and when there’s a week or so in between, that’s super easy to stay on top of — when there’s doubles back to back or in the case of the topic at hand, TRIPLES back to back, it’s super tempting for me to bounce between each one. Sometimes I let myself believe if I bounce back and forth, I’ll finish them both at the same time. That is not true, at least not for me. My advice is pour your time into each one independently, and just accept that while wedding #1 may be finished on the day you prefer all to be done, wedding #2 might be a day or two later, and wedding #3 might be a day or two after that. And newsflash, THAT IS OKAY! :) In my opinion, as long as you are falling into the time frame you promise your couples and/or the time frame that is stated in your contract — you’re good to go.
And there ya have it!! I could very well likely throw out more advice, but after thinking back on that triple of mine — these are easily my best tips that I feel helped me the most!!
