Photographer Asking Bride Questions on Wedding Day

We were shooting video at a wedding at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, recently,  and the photographer would ask the bride questions like, “Do you want pictures with each of your bridesmaids?”.  After shooting the bridesmaids he asked “Do you want a picture with the groom and the bridesmaids?”.  This went on throughout the day, and is something we see quite often with inexperienced Photographers.

All these questions should have been asked long before the wedding day.  It ended up taking up a lot of valuable time.   Here we were at one of the most artistic venues in the Tampa Bay Area with a gorgeous bride, and as a videographer, I just had to watch precious valuable time being wasted unnecessarily.   I did try to move things along as much as I could,  however during the formals the videographer should work around the photographer, so I could only do so much without stepping on the toes of the photographers.   I just had to shoot what I could, but in my head the clock was going tic, tic, tic, as the sun was going down and potential great sunset shots with it.   What a shame.   I was thinking, had this been one of our photographers, we would have been “going to town” with great artistic shots.   There are times when it is necessary to ask a question to the bride, but our philosophy is to get as much information about what you want and don’t want before the day of the wedding, so that on the wedding day, we can save time.   We also want you, the bride, to be able to “not have to think” on your wedding day.  We want you to be able to relax on your wedding day, not be stressed out with a bunch of unnecessary questions.   A question to you, will cause you to re-direct your focus, and think, and then sometimes a bridesmaid or parent will give their advice on the answer to that question, and before you know it, the photographer has lost control of the situation.  It is best to plan as much ahead of time, and a good photographer will facilitate that game plan.  It’s all about time, and too many unnecessary questions, will waste time and burden the bride.