Wedding Etiquette
 

Not sure if this is the right part of the forum to post this , if not then let me know and I'll move it .


I haven't been to a wedding for quite a few years so this weekends one was the first since I’ve been into my photography , so I can only describe my emotion as gob smacked when the vicar stated that because there was a pro photographer there no one would be aloud to take any photos or video at all .
Now I certainly don't have any problem with the family spending good money on a pro photographer and asking people to keep out of the way when they are doing their job , but to ban all of the family and friends from taking their own shots is I think totally over the top . I must point out that I don't know where these instructions came from ( family , church or photographer ) but they were read out by the vicar before the bride arrived .

The only other time that I have come across anything like this before is when I was at Lands End and I was told that I could not take a photo of my partner beside the sign post and that we would have to buy a photo or take our own from out side the fence .

Is this the norm now or do you think that this was an isolated incident .

Mark

I am hoping to get to shoot a few more weddings and must admit I like this approach by the vicar. More than likely he was asked to say this by the couple, perhaps at the request of the photographer but it may also have been to do with him wanting to stop flashes going off all over the place and ruining the occasion. A pro will often be asked not to use flash in a church and yet every guest in the place it seems at times feels they have the right to flash away. Whenever I`ve been a guest I have accepted that within the church is not the place to get shots and satisfied myself with getting them outside or at the reception whilst always aiming to stay out of the way and not steall the set ups of the pro who might have been paid a lot of money by the couple to get best possible shots of the day and has had to battle against people getting in the way with phones, cameras and the rest. Well done vicar I say.

Some photographers have it as a clause in their contract that other cameras / photography is not allowed so when you`re able to take shots think yourself lucky. If the B&G are getting a deal for a CD of shots as I supply within my packages it means shots are readily accessible anyway.

I have heard them ask for no flashes, but never an outright ban on taking photos.

Never heard of this.

Sounds like the pro trying to get as much money as he possibly can by getting the couple to ban anyone else getting any shots, or am I just too cynical?

Did you ask them why afterwards?

Didn't ask them , didn't want to put them in an awkward position . It was their day after all no matter what I thought .

At a recent wedding where I was acting as the official photographer I was the only person permitted by the registrar to take photographs during the ceremony, and even then I was encouraged to avoid flash as much as possible. Wedding guests were told firmly that they must not use cameras until the ceremony had finished. This seems to be fairly common practice.

After the ceremony the bride and groom then posed some shots, including a pretence of signing the register again, and the registrar was then happy for a whole barrage of cameras and camera phones to be used.

This was purely the registrar's ruling - nothing to do with me, although I was glad not to have random flashes going off while trying to capture important shots.

[I]Edit: I should mention that this was not a church wedding but did take place in a historic building.[/I]

At my wedding last year, we have a friend who is a professional wedding photographer so we naturally asked her to take our wedding shots. There wasn't a ban on others using cameras, but when we got out proofs, it was annoying to see that in the group shots, people weren't always looking at the photographer, but instead looking at their family/friends standing behind the photographer, and it ruined some good shots.

So I can understand why the B&G or photographer would stipulate that no other cameras were allowed. We were also a bit annoyed that some of the family didn't want to pay for the professional shots as they had their own, even though the pro's were much better quality.

There is a simple cure to the above problem.

Identify a location away from where everyone is gathered, get the ushers to send people across as & when they are required, then at the end have a free-for-all when everyone can take pics. You get precisely the people needed for each set of shots & you get their attention 100% because everyone else is back in the bar or looking on from a distance.

It works well enough for me, & you don't have to put anyone's nose out of joint by banning people taking photographs, you just give them their own slot.

[QUOTE=Cathus;55538]There is a simple cure to the above problem.

Identify a location away from where everyone is gathered, get the ushers to send people across as & when they are required, then at the end have a free-for-all when everyone can take pics. You get precisely the people needed for each set of shots & you get their attention 100% because everyone else is back in the bar or looking on from a distance.

It works well enough for me, & you don't have to put anyone's nose out of joint by banning people taking photographs, you just give them their own slot.[/QUOTE]

In hindsight, that's what I wish I had done. But being the groom, I had other things on my mind :)

I've been asked to photograph my friends wedding in Ibiza next year, so I'll be storing up all these tips for when I go.

of course it helps to have a location that you can take the couple away from everyone else & make sure people only come over when called. I appreciate not every location is big enough.