Whether you are a Type A, B, C, or D person, I hope this Wedding Day Detail Must-Haves Guide will save you from an experience that you don’t want and prep you for your wedding day. The goal is to have a more fun and laid-back morning the day of your wedding without too much of the chaos of what wedding days genuinely bring (and yes, all of them chaos…).

I hope you find this Wedding Day Detail Must-Haves Guide I created helpful. This is what I wish I’d had, but no one gave me.

1. Start Earlier Than You (really) Think You Need to

Hear me out. I know everyone says this, but I have built nearly 200 Wedding Timelines for my couples and there is a reason this topic keeps showing up in wedding planning articles. The fact is that I see most couples, even with the right recommendations and personal experiences for wedding day advice, Still don’t follow any advice.

You’re probably reading this thinking…’Great, another photographer who thinks I should start early, so I have to pay them more’.

Bold honesty?

I am not speaking just as a photographer, but also speaking as a bride who overlooked the wedding day advice and planning tips that she was given. I thought I had all of my wedding details planned out perfectly. The hard reality is that if I would have listed to the wedding advice I was given for prepping the morning of, there are negative outcomes I could have prevented. So now I pass wedding advice over to my couples that really makes a difference in preparing my couples for their wedding day. The truth is…Everything takes longer than you expect (and even plan for) on your wedding morning even when it’s going right.

START PREPPING THE NIGHT BEFORE, NOT THE MORNING OF.

Realistically, it would be a dream for all weddings to run as great as the DeLorean did in Back to the Future. I say this with so much love…pulling together all the planning you did on the day of always take longer than expected, even with a well thought-out plan. Ask me how I know…

• I did my own makeup…and had lashes that refused to cooperate.
• I hired professional hair for myself and my bridesmaids. My hair personally decided to humble my hairdresser and gave her a run for her money. It took nearly an hour longer that we did not plan for.
• My 11-year old decided that it was the perfect day for a meltdown. Timing? Impeccable to say the least.
• Oh, and I was still breastfeeding my 8-month old and had to stop several times mid-mascara to feed lil’ man.

End outcome? I was late for my own ceremony.

I hear often my couples say that they want more of the day spent with less worrying. The unpopular opinion to make that happen?

Give yourself breathing room for things to go wrong.

It drives my mother over the moon that I plan for ‘worst’ case scenarios. Call me an Optimistic Pragmatic if you will. Not only do I plan for Murphy’s Law, but I anticipate the best outcomes so I am never caught off guard when things go sideways.

More realistic timelines :: Less stress nearly 100% of the time.

📸 Photographer Note: I always plan to start getting ready ‘final touches’ photos around 1.5-2 hours prior to Ceremony line-up. If you are wanting the flatlays (a.k.a. details) photos and parts of getting ready, I need real time to complete these tasks. 10 minutes is not going to cut it.

2. Your Getting Ready Zone Should be Set up to Work for You

Lighting matters. So does space.

I know wedding mornings are chaos and the best way to get things done is to toss things here…there…quite literally everywhere. It is so easy for rooms to become a mess that when photographers or HMUA artists arrive, we have to pick up the areas before we can get started.

Why?

Because in all honesty, none of us really want to remember the mess of the getting ready room and people don’t actually want the candid moments in their entirety. People throw the term ‘candid’ and ‘dcoumnetary’ around without really knowing what it means.

I’m not full documentary, but I kind of am. I’m also not the up-in-your-face news reporter telling you, “Hey, move the curling iron and maybe smile a little more.” What I am is your personal hype woman, chaos-calmer, and go-to guide for making sure you feel like the best version of yourself, even with pre-wedding nerves kicking in.

So here’s the real question:
Do you want every empty Starbucks cup, overflowing makeup bag, and your accidental RBF documented for life…or do you want someone who’s going to gently jump in, clear the clutter, fix the flyaways, and remind you that you’re killing it?

Because I’ll absolutely capture the true documentary real moments, but I’ll also help you (and your space) look and feel GOOD while doing it. We’re not staging fake stuff, we’re just making sure your timeline and space actually support the memories you want to relive.

And if you’re anything like me (aka: multiple water bottles, iced coffee round two, and three curling irons on the counter), do yourself a favor and assign someone to be on clutter patrol. I promise, future-you will thank present-you.

3. Make a “Don’t Forget This!” Wedding Day Detail Must-Haves Checklist

Ever hear the phrase “Out of sight, out of mind?” Well…this phrase is great if you are looking to forget about certain things, intentionally. But, on a wedding day…this means ‘Out of site, forgot to put in car‘.

4. Be Intentional About Who’s In the Room With You

Okay real talk. This one nobody wants to say out loud, but I will.

Not everyone needs to be in that room with you. I don’t care if it’s your future mother-in-law, your cousin who “has always been there for everything,” or whoever guilt-tripped their way onto the getting ready list. If the energy in the room is off, you will feel it. The whole morning.

I felt it at my own wedding. Didn’t want to make a big deal out of it so I just kept going. Smiled through it and let it slide off my chest. I was uncomfortable at times just to make everyone happy and I feel like it set the day off on a pace I didn’t want. I heard about it for months after.

The people in that room should be the ones who make you laugh, who hand you coffee without being asked, who don’t make a single moment about themselves, and most importantly make you feel comfortable.

That’s it. The whole criteria.

💛 If someone doesn’t fit a positive energy start to the day, it’s okay to quietly not invite them into your getting ready space. Set boundaries. You’re not being a bride- or groomzilla. You’re protecting one of the most important energies to the start of the biggest moment of your life.

5. Lay Everything Out the Night Before

I’m not kidding when I say this one thing will save your entire morning. The night before your wedding, lay it all out. Dress hung up. Shoes out. Jewelry, vow book, something borrowed, something blue, all of it in one spot.

Grab a box, a tote, a little pouch, whatever you have. Label it something that makes you remember it. “Details.” “Important AF.” “Don’t Touch This.” Doesn’t matter what it says as long as you know exactly where it is when you wake up.

Because here’s what happens when you don’t do this. It’s 7am. Your hair appointment started 20 minutes ago. Someone is asking you where the ribbon is. Your cousin swears she saw the vow book but can’t remember where. And you’re digging through three different bags in your pajamas trying to find your grandmother’s earrings.

Not the vibe.

Also, and this is the photographer (and past bride) in me talking, if you want those beautiful flat lay detail photos you’ve been saving on Pinterest, this is literally how we make that happen. Leave everything in one bag or dedicated box where it is easy to find when I arrive. The second I walk in I grab it and get to work while you’re still in the chair. You won’t have to tell me a single thing. I’ve got it.

6. Assign a Morning Point Person

I have to tell you about one of my brides.

She was sweet, she was organized, she had a color coded spreadsheet and a timeline printed in three different fonts. And she spent her entire wedding morning on her phone. Texting the florist. Tracking down the caterer. Making sure Aunt ‘Marcy’ found parking. Answering questions that had nothing to do with her being a bride and everything to do with her trying to run the whole show herself.

By the time she walked down the aisle she was exhausted. Not nervous excited. Just exhausted. Not a smile on her face.

Please don’t do that.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give you is to Hire a Day of Wedding Coordinator, delegate a friend, a family member, someone you trust completely who is NOT in your wedding party because they’ll be getting ready too. Make them your day of contact or just point of contact for the morning. Give them full permission to handle things without coming to you every five minutes to find out what to do or how to handle X,Y, Z.

The florist has a question? Point person.

Someone can’t find the bow tie? Point person.

Aunt Marcy needs to know where to sit? Say it with me. Point person.

When I arrive I go straight to them first. We sync up, I find out if anything has changed, and I figure out where everything is. You won’t have to answer a single question. You just get to be.

That’s literally the whole job for your wedding. Just be present :: Be the Bride and/or Be The Groom.

7. Slow Down and Make Space to Enjoy Your Wedding.

I’m going to tell you something I wish someone had told me before my own wedding day. I’m a little mad about it honestly.

Slow down.

Not in a ‘stop and smell the roses’ kind of way. I mean actually, physically, intentionally slow all the way down. My wedding day flew by so fast I don’t even know if I really enjoyed it. One minute I was sitting in the chair getting my hair done and the next I was waving goodbye at the end of the night wondering where the whole day went.

The man I waited five years to marry.

And I don’t even remember what our food tasted like or little details of the day because I was so in my head the entire day.

I think about that a lot.

So this is me, as your photographer and honestly as someone who has been exactly where you are, telling you to please let yourself feel this day. Not just get through it.

I’m a photographer. I stand in the corner of getting ready rooms for a living and I watch everything. And what I can tell you is that the photos that make brides completely lose it when they get their gallery back are almost never the ones you’d expect.

It’s not always the ceremony. Sometimes it’s a random candid of their dad in the doorway. Their best friend squeezing their hand. Their mom when she didn’t know anyone was looking.

I was looking. That’s my job.

But I can only capture what’s actually happening in that room. So please just be there. Eat the food someone brought you. Let people hug you. Cry if you need to. Laugh at something off the wall.

You can worry about literally everything else any other day of your life. Not today.

Final Note From a Bride Who’s Been There

Look, things might not go perfectly on your wedding day. Your dress might snag. Your ring bearer might eat a macaron before photos. You might forget your veil. True story.

Nobody handed me a real wedding day checklist. Not the Pinterest version. Not the one in bridal magazines. The actual one, with the uncooperative lashes and the kid melting down and the breastfeeding stops and all of it. I had to figure it out myself.

That’s why I wrote this.

Take care of your people, your timeline, and your peace going into that morning and I promise the little things won’t derail you. You’ll laugh them off. You’ll actually be in it instead of watching it happen from inside your own stress spiral.

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I’ll be showing up to capture.

I have documented hundreds of versions of weddings in Colorado and beyond…honestly quite literally nothing that happens on a wedding day surprises me anymore. I’ve seen it all. My job isn’t just to take pretty pictures, it’s to walk in, figure out what’s going on, and make sure you don’t have to think about a single thing you don’t want to think about.

If that sounds like what you need, let’s get this adventure on the road!

Reach out today and I will give you all the wedding day advice that you could ever use. Consider it the guide nobody gave us.

Last updated: April 29, 2026