Planning a wedding on the Gulf Coast is a little different than planning one just about anywhere else. I’m based in Mobile, Alabama, and I spend a lot of my year photographing weddings throughout Mobile, Fairhope, Baldwin County, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Pensacola, and everywhere in between. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the Gulf Coast is beautiful, but she is also going to do whatever the hell she wants. It might be sunny all morning and raining sideways by three. It might be 80 degrees in November. The humidity is basically a permanent wedding guest. My biggest advice is to plan for the weather without letting it control your entire day. Have a rain plan you actually like, consider the heat when choosing your ceremony time, and give yourself enough flexibility in your timeline that a random afternoon storm doesn’t feel like the end of the world.
When you’re choosing your venue and building your timeline, think beyond what everything looks like on Pinterest. Think about what it’s actually going to feel like to be there. Where will you get ready? Is there natural light? How far are you traveling between locations? What time does the sun set? Are you going to spend half of cocktail hour driving across town for photos you could have taken ten steps from your venue? Some of my favorite wedding photographs have happened because we had ten extra minutes to wander outside, because the light suddenly got beautiful, or because nobody was rushing us into the next thing. A little breathing room in your timeline gives you space for the photographs you planned for—and, more importantly, the ones none of us could have planned.
I also think it’s easy to get so wrapped up in creating a beautiful wedding that you accidentally start planning a day for everyone except yourselves. Hire vendors whose work you genuinely connect with, choose details because you love them, and give yourself permission to skip traditions that don’t mean anything to you. From the photographer side of things, I love a beautifully styled detail and an intentionally editorial portrait, but I care just as much about the completely unplanned pieces of a wedding day… the way your dad looks at you before walking you down the aisle, your best friend losing it during a speech, the wind destroying your veil in the funniest possible way. You can have the beautiful, intentional photographs and the messy, honest ones. I actually think a wedding gallery needs both.
More than anything, remember that your wedding is not a production you have to perform perfectly. Whether you’re getting married underneath the oak trees in Mobile, somewhere along the bay in Fairhope, barefoot near the Gulf, or in the middle of downtown, build a day that feels like the two of you. Make the timeline, watch the weather, have the backup plans—and then, when the day gets here, live in it. Years from now, I don’t want you to look at your photographs and only remember how everything looked. I want you to remember the heat, the wind, the people, the nervousness before the ceremony, the absolute chaos on the dance floor, and exactly what it felt like to be there. That’s the good stuff.
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