Flag the wedding photos you'd be sad to lose

Every wedding runs late

Not as a failure — as a fact. Hair takes longer. The ceremony starts eleven minutes behind. Someone's boutonnière goes missing. By the time you reach family formals, the forty minutes on the timeline is eighteen.

At that moment your photographer has to triage. Right now they do it with no information about what you'd choose, so they default to what's conventional: parents, siblings, wedding party, done. The shot with your father's brother who flew in from Ireland doesn't make the cut, because nobody told them it was the one that mattered.

Move the decision to a calmer evening

A starred shot is a promise you made to yourself six weeks earlier, when you had time to think. On the day it sits at the top of the list, above the line, and it gets protected.

The discipline is in the restraint. If you star thirty shots you've starred nothing. Most couples land somewhere between eight and fifteen — enough to cover the irreplaceable ones without turning the whole list into an emergency.

What people usually star

• Anything involving a grandparent, or anyone whose health means this might be the last one
• The full-family shot that only happens when everyone is in one place, which is roughly never
• Friends who travelled a long way and will be gone by Sunday
• A specific moment you already have a picture of in your head — the toast, the doorway, the light on the stairs
• Anything involving a person who will leave early

The other side of the line

Unstarred doesn't mean unwanted. It means “if the day falls apart, this is the one to drop.” Giving your photographer permission to cut is as useful as telling them what to keep — it's the difference between them making a judgement call and them making an educated one.