Wedding days are exciting. We always get so pumped on our way to photograph weddings. We love the surprises and all of the happy emotions happening throughout the day.  We love being a part of these moments. However, we have learned, to make most of the weddings we photograph, we must come prepared with essentials! Below, you will find a list of what we will NOT leave for the wedding trip without. Believe us, it took a while for us to catch onto some of this stuff.

1. Lots of Water!  We always pack large tumblers filled with ice water.  These usually stay in our vehicle and we make frequent trips back and forth.  We squeeze in little moments to rehydrate ourselves throughout the day.  Not only do we fill a tumbler with ice water, but we also bring a large backup tumbler. We have also been known to pack a cooler with bottled water. This keeps us hydrated, cool on those hot days, and energized.
2. Sunscreen, Chapstick, and Ib Profin. Many of our wedding days are spent outside in the hot summer sun.  The majority of our days are typically outside when the sun is still pretty high in the sky and at its strongest.  We always apply sunscreen and chapstick a few times throughout our day. Bonus: Bug Spray is important to have because you never know when those mosquitos will be out and about!
3. Dolla Dolla Bills Y’all. We always pack a few dollar bills for either water at a vending machine (if we aren’t around the vehicle where we packed water) or for a tip at the bar if we decide to order a soda with dinner.
4. Towels. We bring a couple of small towels in case we find somewhere neat to take a photo that is either dirty or wet.  We don’t use these often but love to have them, just in case.
5. Snacks…that don’t melt. If you don’t know already, we are lovers of food and snacks.  We usually pack granola bars and fruit to snack on throughout the day if we have time.  We feel like this is necessary as we get hungry.  We want to make sure we keep ourselves energized throughout the day.  We have learned pretty quickly that we must pack snacks that won’t melt easily in our hot vehicle….or put them in a small cooler. 
6. Extra Shoes.  To be honest, this is something we did early on.  We have now pretty much narrowed it down to our most comfortable wedding day shoes.  However, every now and then we will find ourselves getting tired and sore feet. It is nice to put a fresh pair of shoes later on. We feel like new people when we change shoes.  We are lucky to have each other…sometimes we just switch shoes!
7. Gifts!! We always come bearing a small gift for our Bride and Groom.  We are guests at their wedding and they have let us be a part of their special day and let us in on very intimate moments, so it is the least we feel we can do for them.
8. Paper, Pen, and Clipboard.  We carry this everywhere! This is where we keep our timeline that we have discussed with our Bride and Groom. This is also where we have listed the names of bridesmaids, mothers, fathers, etc.  It makes for an easy-to-use reference sheet when the day gets chaotic and people are getting difficult to wrangle back in for photos. 
9. Wooden Hangers and Clips for Dresses.  This may seem teeny tiny, but it makes the world of difference in photos.  We try to encourage our brides to have matching hangers for all bridesmaid dresses, but that is sometimes the least of their worries, so we bring matching wooden hangers to switch out for the black plastic hangers many bridesmaid dresses come on from the retailer.  We also bring clips for dresses to make them have more of a slimming effect in photos.
10. Umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh. This is so important to have in case there is a little drizzle.  One us typically holds it while the other person shoots the photos.  
11. Cameras, Lenses, Flash Equipment, and EXTRA batteries and SD cards.  These are a no brainer.

 

Those are what we like to call our essentials.  We have also just recently decided to find an old luggage bag (on wheels) and decided this is where we will house a lot of our essentials, so they are easy to haul from location to location.  It can be a long day on our feet, but if we are over-prepared, we will have energy all the way to the end.  Our goal is to serve our clients as best as we possibly can. We get into our vehicle at the end of the night we should be so exhausted that all we want to do is take our shoes off, chug some water, grab a snack (typically unhealthy), and head home to our husband and kids for big hugs.

 

We hope this helps!

 

Erin & Emily

 

P.S. Erin brings rice Krispie bars for her pre-wedding snack. Emily always packs her jalapeno flavored chips. 🙂