Photography Shot List and Etiquette for who to include

Following.

Additional info: 1 girlfriend will be 1 yr together at wedding, 1 girlfriend will be 3 years together at our wedding and she's in my bridal party, and 1 boyfriend has been together for 5 years but he's leaving for med school after wedding and I wouldn't be surprised if they broke up with the long distance med school.

This might be too much information, but oh well!

We will have two photographers for our entire wedding. We're doing all photos before the ceremony so I'm we can enjoy our reception uninterrupted, aside from catching a great sunset over the lake.

Our photos will be bridal party/groomsmen getting ready, followed by a first look, then formal family photos. For this were including (my side of the family) a photo of me with my parents, a photo with just me and my grandpa, then a photo of my parents+grandpa, with myself and FH. Similar plan with his family, except he has 3 married siblings, so we'll have a couple more photos with his side of the family.

As far as SO's being included in photos, I think it would be fair to not involve them in formal pictures. In each wedding I've gone to, or have been in, they did not include significant others in the photos (despite the fact that we're engaged)

I'd say, keep your formal pictures family, and throughout the night see if you can have the photographer snap a couple photos of you with people throughout the wedding

Ok, even though my sister will be married when we take family photos, I do still want one with my mom, dad, sister and myself. It's very important to me to have just a nice family portrait of the four of us. Everything else I would include my brother in law. I think it's all preference really. plus you can do both.

We did bride with parents and BMs. Then groom with parents and GM. Then both with both parents, full bridal party, and grandparents. Then we goofed off

We are not including SO's (married or not) in our formal photos.

Following

Keep it simple. Designate a person from your side and your fiance's side to wrangle your relatives (your photographer has no idea who they are....)

We were both in all of our family photos. we did the 2 of us with my family, us with H's mom/stepdad, us with H's dad/stepmom, bridal party, groom's party, whole WP together, individual shots of each of us with each of our attendants (which i didn't really care about but in hindsight they're some of my fave shots), and that was about it for the formal shots. (also a buttload of me and H, obviously.) neither of our brothers have significant others, but if they had i think we would've included them, just because, but i feel like you could just as easily go the other way and not include them. SOs for WP peeps weren't included, though our photog did take some couples photos of some of them as requested over the course of the evening which was nice. we did all our formal photos before the ceremony and all these took about 90 mins.

Yes, we did do some photos of the immediate / original families (e.g., parents and siblings (no significant others; grandparents and bride or groom (not both the newlyweds); etc.). I personally think it's a good idea to do photos of some family without significant others. Despite long term relationships or even marriages, sometimes things do change, so it's nice to have a photo of the immediate family to look back on, if anything does change.

Don't worry about hurt feelings. You don't have to say "I want this photo just the family in case you guys break up!" If someone looks hurt or says something, just say "We just wanted a photo of the "original clan" like when we were kids :-)" or heck, blame it on the photographer wanting an immediate family-only photo ;-)

I don't think it hurts to have some with bfs/gfs if you have the time, but I would definitely include some without them. If they broke up and those were all I had, I think I would be kicking myself a bit after ...plus I don't think its an unreasonable ask.

Following

I think it is okay to not have BFs/GFs in the pictures.

We did both. It didn't really take that long. Me and my husband with my family and then my husband stepped out for pictures of just me with them. Although I agree with you I think that's unnecessary. Thr point is us getting married and joining families, I see no need to exclude me from his family pictures and vice Versa. And I don't have any family members with boyfriends/girlfriends. They are all either married or single, so I didn't have that issue. I don't think it's bad to exclude the boyfriend/girlfriend though. What if they break up? Then you have this random person in your wedding photos for the rest of eternity