Getting ready, done properly.

Light

Bridal preparation tips start with a window.

If you take one thing from this page, take this. Window light is soft, flattering and does half of your make-up artist’s job for her. Ask her to set up facing the biggest window in the room (Avril Jarrett, who I work with often, does this without being asked), and if the room has no decent window, change rooms. A hotel bathroom under a downlight is where good photographs go to die.

It is also the reason I ask about your getting-ready location months in advance. Big windows, a tidy corner, and a floor without seventeen bags on it: that is all the set-up a wedding morning needs.

The details

Put the small things in one place.

Dress, shoes, rings, invitation, perfume, jewellery, flowers. Those first twenty minutes are when I photograph them, so have them together somewhere with a bit of light before I arrive. It saves a bridesmaid turning the room upside down looking for the earrings, and those pictures are the ones that end up framed.

Food

Eat a proper breakfast. Then eat again.

Of all the bridal preparation tips on this page, this is the one I say most often and the one most often ignored. The Prosecco starts early, the nerves kill your appetite, and by half eleven a lot of brides have had three glasses and a croissant. A wedding day is a marathon, not a sprint. Eat something with protein in it before the make-up starts, and keep fruit, nuts or small sandwiches on the go through the morning. Nobody has ever regretted the bacon roll.

Water

A glass of water for every glass of fizz.

You will feel better, look better and last longer. Keep a bottle on the dressing table and finish it. Boring, and true.

Time

The day will not start without you.

Time does strange things on a wedding morning; it crawls until eleven and then vanishes. Build in twenty minutes of slack, and when the dress is on, stop. Look around the room. These are your people, and you will not get this exact hour back. Put a playlist on, let the bridesmaids fuss, and trust the suppliers you hired. We do this every week.

Cards and gifts

If you are swapping notes, do it while make-up is still in the room.

A handwritten card from your partner, read on the morning, is one of the most emotional moments I photograph all year. Read it once your make-up is done but before your artist packs up. Tears are inevitable, and a two-minute touch-up is a lot easier than a second application.

The reveal

Tell me who is coming through the door.

The moment your bridesmaids, your mum or your dad see you in the dress is the one I most want to get right, and the only way I can is to know it is coming. Tell me who is being shown and roughly when, and I will be in the right place with the right lens before the door opens.

Delegate

Give the jobs away.

You will want to run everything. Don’t. Hand the phone to a bridesmaid, give the running order to the maid of honour, and make one person the point of contact for suppliers. You have exactly one job on the morning of your wedding, and it is to be there. Most bridal preparation tips come down to that.

Reflect

A quiet minute before you go.

Dressed, flowers in hand, the car outside. Take a breath. The walk down the aisle will be fine, the vows will be fine, and if they are not, nobody will remember. What they remember is how you looked when you turned up. So turn up like someone who slept, ate and got ready by a window.

In short

Bridal preparation tips, in one breath.

Window light, a real breakfast, water between the fizz, twenty minutes of slack, cards before the make-up artist leaves, tell me who is coming through the door, give the jobs away, and take one quiet minute before you go. That is the whole list. The rest of the bridal preparation tips you will read online are variations on those eight.