Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 157 - The DW Day-of Timeline: How TAs can serve their couples
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to the Travel Agent Cineer podcast. Thank you so much for stopping by yet again, especially this episode. I'm expanding on yesterday's DW planning process, kind of like general timeline. And I'm gonna do a little bit of a deep dive into the day of timeline. So I'm gonna pull up on my screen here my day of timeline templates that I use with my wedding couples. And it it changes. I just have like this weird like table thing. I can't show it to you here. Day of Timeline Template Master. Here we go. So I created, let's see, it is four, one, two, three, four blocks wide table inside of a Google Doc. And then it's just every single event down. And there's some questionable items because not everyone's doing these things anymore. So the first column on the left is time. What is the second column? Location is the third column, and who is the fourth column. What I typically do is I have this, I just make a copy of this, and I'll eliminate things if I know for sure it's not happening, but I just have a copy of this. And I put in the ceremony time, because that's confirmed already, right? And the cocktail hour time is confirmed already. Start of reception is confirmed, right? That's already all done. Day of timeline, I like to do about two months prior and then reconfirm with the photography team to make sure that the flow works with the shot list they've submitted and blah blah blah. Okay. So the whole what section is filled in from breakfast all the way down to the send-off. The location. That is all different for each wedding. Some people want to have breakfast at like the buffet. Some people want to have a semi-private event. Some people want to just have breakfast alone in their room. Okay. And then the who, the couple fills in the who. I share this with them. I have a whole folder I share with them. They fill in the who and they'll fill in some of these. Like they can't really fill in the detail shots section. We're gonna get into that. Or like where the bridal party getting ready shots are. Maybe they can if they've got the bridal suite rented. but they have to have the who because I put this on the individual itineraries for photography specifically. So breakfast, we're gonna go down the line of what's in the what section. Breakfast, hair and makeup arrival. Hair and makeup for bridesmaids. Let me back up. Hair and makeup arrival is if they have an off-site beauty team. Otherwise, that's just change to hair and makeup appointments. Or I eliminate the completely. ⁓ because then there's hair and makeup for the bridesmaids. Order room service. This is one thing. A lot of resorts will provide some like refreshments on the wedding day, but I always r ask for. The bride and the groom side. Somebody orders room service for them if they're just getting ready in their rooms later on, around 2 p.m. Then there's the bride's hair and makeup, not the bridesmaids. We're gonna talk about that in a second. ⁓ photo team arrival or the start time if they're like off site or if they're on site resort team, whatever. Then there are all the different possibilities of things that they they they they may wish to have covered. So there's detail shots. That's like the picture of the dress, the picture of the shoes, the rings on the invitation they brought, stuff like that. There's bridal party getting ready shots. That is optional. There's groomsmen shots while the groomsmen are having their shots and it's like the ties being tied, the jackets being put on. I don't know if you've seen a recent gallery. from a wedding, but I've seen a lot of they're all taking a shot at tequila together or rum ⁓ in the room. That's usually when the bridesmaids and the bride are like doing their final changes, getting her dress on, getting her veil in. Then there's the bridal party and bridal portraits. This can be before or immediately after the ceremony or during the during like the newlywed photo shoot slash cocktail hour. There's the option of a first look with dad or mom. There are the bride and groom's first look. That's optional. Some of them do personal vows at that point. Then I have the ceremony, then cocktail hour, then family photos, group photos, the start of reception. Sunset photos, this is a question mark. Grand entrance and first dance. Prayer, questionable. Speeches, cake cutting is questionable, garter toss is questionable. Boke toss is questionable. All of these three items are like going out of favor for wedding receptions. ⁓ then there's the first dance, then there's dancing, then there's the father daughter, mother daughter, son mother dances. The you know what I mean. And then Fireworks slash send off or a final dance. It's gonna be one of those three things at the end. So everything is based on the ceremony. Let's say it's a 5 p.m. ceremony start time. And then what how much coverage if the bride wants getting ready shots and how much photography coverage they have? So if they want. If they want coverage from getting ready all the way down through the end of the reception, they're going to need a minimum eight hour package, period. And ⁓ my mouse froze. I think the batteries in my mouse are dying. Anyway, bride, hair, and makeup in just flat out in your brain. Doesn't matter what look it is, doesn't matter what ethnicity we're going with here, just bridal hair and makeup for the bride alone. It's gonna be two and a half, three hours. Just put three hours in your head. So if it's a 5 p.m. ceremony, she has to have her hair and makeup done by 2 p.m. at the latest. And then she's got to change, okay? So you kind of just like work with that logic. Logic? Logic, not logic. Logic. So she's gonna be 2 p.m. And then you need to ask like what kind of coverage you want because you want to help make this as easy as possible. And most of the time when I send these two photography teams, they're like perfect. ⁓ and then the hair and makeup for bridesmaids, that's all dependent on. if they want both hair and makeup and how many bridesmaids there are. The more, the bigger the bridal party is, the earlier everyone's gonna need to be getting up and getting ready. And this is why I have breakfast. The breakfast is for the bride and the bridal party only. It is not for everyone. And that's just to make sure that everyone that's getting their hair and makeup done has a clean face, has clean clean hair. Why can't I talk? Clean face, clean hair, and they're actually awake and sober enough to get their hair and makeup done. That's why I'm like, let's do breakfast. ⁓ so if she has a party of six and all six are doing hair and makeup, they're gonna be about an hour and a half apiece. And most ⁓ salons are gonna have a maybe two to three artists at a time. So that's gonna be an additional. I don't know, two to three hours total. If they've got three artists, six bridesmaids, hair and makeup, and they've got three in each chair, and no one else has any services. so now they're gonna probably have them start around 11 with hair and makeup services. It just really depends. And you need to confirm that with the spa, or if it's an off-site makeup team, they're gonna let you know, like we're gonna be here at this time. Usually in my experience it's a 10 to 11 a.m. start time for hair makeup in general. So you can just put 10 a.m. I don't know why I'm typing this out. ⁓ so I remember what I'm telling you in this podcast episode. Therefore, breakfast needs to be 8 a.m., 8:30 at the latest at a buffet restaurant so that they can grab something to eat, slowly wake up, make sure everyone's there. You put 8:30 on there and you've got a bridesmaid who likes to party and can hang. She might not show up until eight forty five, but she will be there and awake. Okay? ⁓ the groomsman shots are usually During the bridesmaid's final changes. So if photography is doing eight hours of coverage, then the reception, let's say the reception goes to 11. They're gonna show up at 3 p.m. for coverage if they want coverage all the way to the end. ⁓ and this helps. I hope this help episode helps you if you have a destination wedding couple. It's like, how much photography coverage should I get? Do you want getting ready? Yes. Do you want The very end of the reception covered? Yes. Okay, you need eight. You need eight hours. That's that's just what it is. ⁓ do you want getting ready? Yes. Do you want everything covered to the end of reception? No. How far into the reception do you want? Just get the dances and the speeches. Okay, you need six hours. You'll be fine. ⁓ Anyway. So the groomsman is almost always in this type of timeline going to be around three PM. ⁓ three thirty or no, yeah, three fifteen, three thirty at the latest. ⁓ Sorry, I did that in backwards. Photography arrivals 3 p.m. Then the detail shots and the bridal party getting ready when they're like still in their robes and stuff and they're just pretending to put makeup on them in the photos. ⁓ then they'll get to the groomsman around 3 30, 3 45, and then they can do the bridal party and bridal portraits, maybe some first looks and ⁓ the bride and groom's first looks before the ceremony. It all just depends on what they want. Now I have had couples send me a shot list because I partnered with photographers here in the US for their weddings. They'd have six hundred shots on their shot list. And I'm like, each photo is one minute. You really gonna spend ten hours just taking photos on your wedding day? You need to cut some of the stuff out. Or not worry like let it be candid. You know what mean? so you wanna make sure they don't have an excessive number of family photos. Because if they do, then you have to bump those up to pre-ceremony and talk to the photographer about that. sunset photos, I I don't know if they want ⁓ but that's like the golden hour. I always put the exact time of sunset for their destination on the day of their wedding here so the photographer knows preemptively and can plan accordingly. And the photographer can let me know, hey, we're gonna be done with sunset photos. Let's say in this example. Five to five thirty is the ceremony, five thirty to six thirties cocktail hour, six thirty to ten thirty is the reception. ⁓ sunsets at seven ⁓ two PM. Okay, so they can start the reception. They can then we have the option of do they want to do the grand entrance and combine that with the first dance. Like the second they come in, get the first dance knocked out of the way, maybe do some speeches, and then sneak off before dinner service at I don't know, seven o'clock up at the six thirty reception time. That's not the smartest way to do it. So you gotta think about like how they want this to look. Are they gonna have a prayer? And then with the cake cutting, garter toss, bouquet toss, do they want those included? Because that's important information that they need to put on the music form for the DJ so that he either avoids or entertains the idea of them. And then we can kind of just sort out the rest of the stuff there to help the DJ. So that's like a basic day of timeline. I'm just reading my template. I wish I could share it with you. Maybe I'll put it in the description. I don't know. Mmm. I know me. I'm gonna say I'll put it in the description and I'll forget. So that's just kind of how the day of timeline works. Just keep in mind brides, hair, and makeup is three hours. Just make that a flat number of amount of time. Bridal like bridesmaids, if they do hair and makeup, it's up to 90 minutes. ⁓ but they usually have two to three artists for that. So That's important things to consider if they ask anything about the day of timeline and when photography should start, especially if they hire their own photographer and they're like, what time should we start all this? Then you can mention all of that to them and you can help them hash out a day-of timeline, and you will look like a destination wedding rock star, not just a travel agent that does groups tied to weddings. Okay. Bye. Have a good day. Thanks for listening.