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Three ways to maintain simplicity and feel more relaxed on your wedding day

Don’t worry about scuffing the dress a little.

The dress can be a continuing source of stress on your wedding day, at least up until you get on the dance floor. Of course, you’ll be concerned about keeping the dress perfect, but so will your bridesmaids, who are likely to pine over every potential imperfection even more so than you.

This isn’t actually a problem as long as you’ve planned for enough time. For some people, it’s part of the fun! But, even when its planned for, I see that for most brides it is clearly a source of stress. Instead of enjoying time with their bridesmaids and having fun with photos, I see brides fixated on preventing the bottom of the dress from scuffing at all. Not only does it slow things down a lot, those brides are obviously not enjoying themselves as much as they could be.

Now, obviously, you don’t want to go and play volleyball in the wedding dress or have a water balloon fight or something. But, if you can accept that the dress, like any garment, will get some subtle scuff marks, you’ll be able to experience all the wonderful things a lot more easily.

Additionally, scuff marks at the bottom of the dress are not likely to show up in photos.

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Shoot the formals first, or on another day entirely.

Capturing formals on your wedding day will require about 90 minutes or more throughout the day. Formals should be fun, but they can also be a little challenging within the whole mix of the wedding day.

To help create the most relaxed and comfortable experience, shooting formals before the wedding ceremony is a very good option. This consolidates the task so you don’t have to keep adhering to a strict schedule once the ceremony ends.

Even better yet, although not possible for every couple, is to shoot the wedding formals with your wedding party on another day entirely. Although this used to be typical, it’s rare today. Although it has a lot of virtues. It allows the potential to remove almost all portrait photography from the wedding day, which will definitely create a feeling of simplicity.

If you decide to shoot your wedding formals on a different day, after the wedding is advisable. You won’t have to give up any wedding traditions–such as seeing each other before the ceremony. Though, depending what happens on your wedding day, you may need to have your dress cleaned.

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Wear Flats.

The number of brides I hear lamenting their feet by the end of the night, or on social media the next day, is much too high. Sometimes I can see it on their faces in photos too. It’s too bad, since most of them have dresses that completely conceal their feet.

Choosing to wear flats, instead of high heels, at least for the most active portions of the wedding–formal photos, reception–is a worthwhile compromise. If you feel more comfortable, you’ll be more relaxed.

You’ll also enjoy a lot more mobility in flats, particularly during the formal photos, where traveling off the beaten path might be an attractive option.