A few months ago, a photographer asked if I’d be willing to share my wedding day shot list. You know, the list of photos I capture on a wedding day. In the past nine years of being a wedding photographer, I committed my list to memory, but I spent time organizing how I approach the wedding day and the photographs necessary to documenting the day.

This Wedding Day Shot List is in no way a complete guide to shooting a wedding. At all. What we do as artists cannot be summed up in a series of boxes to check…I know this. However, when I started shooting weddings, I felt like I was always missing something. I’d leave a wedding and agonize over the things I overlooked. So I made a list for myself. This list was merely meant to serve as a foundation…every wedding is entirely unique, but if I documented the basics with confidence, it freed me to be creative and push my artistic comfortability. That’s what this list is comprised of: the basics.