Build a family formals list that doesn't take an hour to shoot
Order your family group shots so people get added and peeled away instead of fetched and re-fetched. The single biggest time saver in the wedding day.
Family formals are where weddings lose time
Not because there are many shots — because of the order. Done badly, each grouping means someone walks off and someone new walks on, and the twelve minutes between shots is entirely people-fetching.
The peel-away principle
Start with the largest group that includes the most people, then remove people one layer at a time. Everyone you need is already standing there. Nobody gets fetched twice.
A typical run on one side of the family:
- Couple + all extended family on that side
- Couple + grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins
- Couple + immediate family + grandparents
- Couple + immediate family
- Couple + parents
- Couple + siblings
- One partner + their parents
Then the same run on the other side, then both families combined, then the wedding party. Eighteen groupings this way takes about twenty-five minutes. The same eighteen in random order takes an hour.
Where it gets complicated
Divorced parents, step-families, and estrangements are the reason a generic template fails. There is no default ordering that works, because the question isn't logistical — it's about who stands next to whom and whether that's fine this year.
Decide it in advance, write it down plainly, and let your photographer execute it without having to read the room. There's a fuller guide to this here.
One practical rule: tell your family the formals time in advance and tell them not to leave the ceremony space. The most common cause of a slow formals session is that four of the eighteen people needed have wandered to the bar.
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