Who will be in your cocktail hour photos?

We did parents/grandparents/siblings only. My husband comes from a large family and we were going to be there forever if we did extended family. We did wedding party pictures beforehand and after the ceremony immediate family stayed and we stood in the middle and switched groups in and out. We were done in about 15 minutes and got to join our cocktail hour.

View Quoted Comment Thanks Kelly. I don’t mind doing photos for the full hour but we’re also not doing a first look so wedding party and couple photos will take some time too.

View Quoted Comment Definitely! My photographer suggested limiting family photos to 6 or 7 groupings. My husband has divorced parents so that made a lot of groupings for us. We made a list beforehand and she just called out names to keep things moving quickly. A few tried to be like oh what about this grouping! And we were like nope we are good with our list haha.

View Quoted Comment This is good to know! Thank you!

I ONLY did immediate families — mine (mom,Dad,bro,sil,niece); his (mom&bro) — and bridal party (guys, girls, altogether)...and us! . My family is huge and i didn’t want to waste time trying to wrangle everyone (and I’m glad for this— we were SO over photos and even getting a group of four together took awhile!).

We made a list of multiple family groupings (no divorces, but huge families on both sides, with lots of groupings). Daughter's photographer asked her to appoint a "photo wrangler" who would know all the players and would have a list of all the groupings, to be responsible for moving the right people in and out of photos. We probably did at least 10 groupings in less than 12-15 minutes (the largest grouping was 40+ people...), giving B&G and the wedding party another 45 minutes to add to all they did during first look/before the ceremony while the rest of us were at cocktail hour.

PS -- also, we gave family members a heads up before the wedding so they knew what to expect and to stay at the ceremony site following the ceremony rather than wandering off to the cocktail hour.

View Quoted Comment Love this idea! I have step families on both sides. This will def save time!

We are inviting immediate family only to the wedding (I literally have over 75 first cousins) so mostly my parents, our siblings, nieces and nephews. Our sons will be included before the ceremony after our first look photos but will be there after as well. We also specifically mentioned to our photographer that we want pictures of all our guests and while our ceremony is unplugged, the reception will be open season for phones so we can get pics and selfies with our guests too.

View Quoted Comment It sounds like you had plenty of time. I want to ask the officiant to announce for people to hang around for pictures but then it occurred to me that I have some step people that may hang around that I’ll need to add to my list and then I thought is this going to start going crazy or can I manage it?

View Quoted Comment I’m doing a group photo during the reception and I’m not saying anything about unplugged, but I have so many people who will want photos at the altar together. I want that too I just don’t know how long it will take and I already know it’ll be complicated.

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The group photo sounds nice. We have chosen to focus more on pictures of dancing or just enjoying the reception with most of our guests. The posed pictures (to me anyway) are the ones I want to reserve for our family members. If you have a large family, there is always the option of grouping members into shots, then move on to the next grouping. It could take a while if each cousin, aunt, or uncle wants a picture with just you and I feel like that is best reserved for the reception, but only you can decide if that works for you too.

So this was really the only part of our wedding that I felt was hectic/rushed and I wish it went differently. Immediately following your ceremony, take big group pictures since everyone will want to go mingle and eat/drink during cocktail hour. Designate one family member per group picture (probably do 4 max). So your mom tells her side before the wedding to hangout following, collects all of them, gets them ready. Take 1 picture, then done. I'd only include parents & grandparents & wedding party in pictures beyond that. I think the best order is: large groups, wedding party & family, then bride & groom portraits.

I think it gets far too complicated to include aunts/uncles/cousins. I think it's more typical to do immediate family and grandparents during the cocktail hour and it's less hassle on your photographers for people not paying attention and wandering off. Later during the reception you can either make rounds to tables thanking guests and have the photographer take a pic at each table or you could have your DJ round up your entire side of the family to the dance floor take a group photo then do the same for FH's side.

We are doing pictures before with bridal party, both of our immediate families and my grandmother. I think during the reception we will get group photos like all cousins & aunts/uncles. We’ve done that at both my sisters’ wedding and it’s taken about 5 minutes as the dj announced it as “if you are in the Smith family come to the dance floor for a picture”

View Quoted Comment I agree with you on not doing individual shots. we have to do his mom and dad separately, my mom and dad and stepdad separately, step grandparents separately, my grandparents separately all because we have so many divorces.

View Quoted Comment We can’t do before pictures because my groom can’t see me, but I think getting reception pictures like that is a great idea

View Quoted Comment Yes Im starting to think we will just make some rounds during the reception. Thank you.

View Quoted Comment So when you say “moms side of the family” for the larger group did you mean aunts too or just grandparents? I am planning on having larger groups first and then whittling down

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If you want the larger group photos, then everyone. Start with the largest ones, designate mom to get all the aunts/uncles/cousins in those. Take 1 photo of the larger group, you won't need different poses so 1 is fine. Then dwindle down to smaller ones and make a list of the photos you want with those groups.

We did siblings, parents, grandparents, and aunts & uncles. We're both pretty close with our aunts & uncles, so we didn't want to leave them out. My husband's family is huge though so there was no way for us to include all of the cousins, and a lot of them couldn't make it to the wedding so it would've been weird for us to have half of them in it.