Wedding Planning Questions: 10 Questions to Help Guide Your Wedding Planning

The minute you get engaged, everything changes. All of a sudden, loved ones are asking you if you’ve chosen a date, your friends are sharing advice from their own wedding planning experience, and your social medias are filled with different wedding “trends” and inspo posts. 

And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, you start to ask yourself: “What do we actually want?”

After photographing hundreds of weddings and elopements, we’ve learned that the couples who have the most meaningful celebrations aren’t the ones who follow the latest trends or check off every traditional box. They’re the ones who pause before planning and ask themselves what truly matters to them.

Your wedding isn’t about creating the perfect day. It’s about creating your entire experience. An experience that reflects who you are, what you value, and how you want to remember this moment for the rest of your lives.

Whether you’re dreaming of a multi-day micro-wedding with a handful of loved ones or a traditional celebration with your extended family, these ten wedding planning questions will help you go from what you think you should do to what your heart is actually asking for.

10 Questions To Help Guide Your Wedding Planning

1. What type of celebration feels most meaningful to us?
2. Who do we want to share this day with?
3. How important is travel or a destination setting?
4. Which traditions or rituals matter most to us?
5. Do we want private or public vows?
6. What’s the ideal timeline for our day?
7. What do we want to remember most about our wedding day?
8. How much planning help do we actually need?
9. What do we want our guests to experience?
10. What makes this celebration uniquely ours?

Wedding Planning Questions

1. What type of celebration feels most meaningful to us?

Let’s start with the big wedding planning question: elopement, micro-wedding, or traditional wedding?

• An elopement is typically just the two of you (or a very small group – think fewer than 10 people). 
• A micro-wedding includes ~20-50 of your closest family and friends. 
• A traditional wedding might mean 100+ guests with all the classic elements.

But what matters more than these labels is the kind of experience do you want to have. Do you want the intimacy of private vows in a remote location, or do you want to be surrounded by everyone you love? Do you want hours (or even days) to savor each moment, or do you want a single day filled with energy?

There’s no right answer. We’ve photographed two-person glacier elopements and 100+-person luxury hotel weddings, and both are equally beautiful when they align with what the couple truly wants.

From a photography perspective: Smaller celebrations give us time to explore, to document quiet moments, and to let the day unfold without rushing. Larger weddings often bring more energy, laughter, and candid moments with everyone gathered all together. 

If you’re struggling to choose between intimacy and celebration, consider planning a two-day wedding experience instead. This gives you one day for connection with loved ones and another for adventure and quiet moments together. No rushing. No splitting attention. Just space to be fully present for both. Learn more about the differences between elopements and intimate weddings (and how you can have both).

2. Who do we want to share this day with?

For a lot of couples, this question is harder than it sounds.

Maybe you want your immediate family there, but not extended relatives. Maybe you want your best friends but worry about offending your family. Maybe one of you wants a big celebration and the other wants something small.

Our advice when it comes to choosing who to invite to your wedding is to close your eyes and imagine your ceremony. Who do you see standing there? Who do you need to be present for this to feel complete?

Don’t think about obligation yet. Don’t worry about hurt feelings or expectations. Just feel with your heart. Who makes your list when you’re being completely honest?

From a photography perspective: The people in your photos matter as much as the landscape behind you. When you invite people because they make your heart happy (and not because you’re worried about hurt feelings) that shows through in your photos and makes up the memories you’ll want to revisit forever.

3. How important is travel or a destination setting?

One of the biggest wedding planning questions couples have is “Where should we do this?”. 

The location you choose for your wedding shapes everything from how your day unfolds to what kind of planning it requires to even how your experience feels.

Maybe you’re dreaming of dramatic landscapes that require travel – mountain peaks, desert canyons, or coastlines you’ve never seen before. Destination celebrations offer adventure, breathtaking backdrops, and more chances to turn your wedding into a multi-day experience. But they also often mean more logistics, higher budgets, and asking your guests to travel.

Or maybe you live somewhere beautiful already. Maybe what matters most to you isn’t epic views but being surrounded by the people you love in a place that feels like home. Local celebrations mean easier planning, familiar settings, and the ability to include more people without asking them to cross borders.

Neither option is better. Some couples prioritize the landscape. Others prioritize being closer to home. But both create incredible celebrations, so the question is what matters more to you.

From a photography perspective: Destination locations offer dramatic backdrops that only exist in certain parts of the world. But we’ve also captured stunning weddings in local parks, campgrounds, and family backyards – places that mattered to the couple not because they were epic, but because they felt right.

If you’re leaning toward planning a destination wedding, check out these 12 destination wedding locations around the world! 

4. Which traditions or rituals matter most to us?

You don’t have to do everything just because it’s traditional.

Some wedding rituals will feel more special than others – maybe it’s a cultural ceremony that honors your heritage, or a first dance that lets you slow down and take in the moment. Others may feel empty, like going through motions because that’s what weddings are “supposed” to include.

We’ve photographed couples who incorporated traditional tea ceremonies alongside modern vows. We’ve documented handfasting rituals, ring warming ceremonies, and couples who wrote their own traditions from scratch. We’ve also photographed celebrations where the couple kept it simple – just vows and rings, nothing more.

The question isn’t “What does everyone else do?”. It’s “What feels meaningful to us?” And once you know which moments feel important to you, you can then put your effort into planning those well. You can give them the time and space to unfold naturally without being rushed to the next thing on the timeline.

From a photography perspective: The traditions you choose to include tell us what moments to anticipate and how to photograph them. When something is important to you, we work to document those moments fully (and oftentimes, couples tell us that these moments become their favorite images).

5. Do we want private or public vows?

Most couples think that their wedding vows have to take place during their ceremony, but that’s not the way it has to be.

Public vows mean sharing your promises in front of your guests. Private vows mean exchanging words that are just for the two of you – either before the ceremony, during a first look, or in a separate moment carved out just for this.

Some couples do both. They share short, public vows during the ceremony and save the longer, more vulnerable promises for when it’s just the two of them and no one else can hear.

There is no right or wrong; however, we’ve noticed that for many couples, private vows hit different. Without an audience, they can let their guard down. They cry without worrying how it looks or laugh without feeling self-consciousness. They say things they’d never say in front of anyone else but their partner.

From a photography perspective: Private vows mean we can focus entirely on you two – the way your partner’s hand reaches out for yours part way through or the tears before they fall. Public vows give us more to capture – not just your faces, but your grandmother crying in the front row, your friends holding each other, the way the whole room leans in. Both create powerful photos, just different kinds of stories.

6. What’s the ideal timeline for our day?

When we help couples plan their wedding day timeline, we always ask them how they want their day to actually feel. Relaxed and laid back, or focused and intentional? Or a mix of both?

Traditional weddings typically follow a familiar timeline: getting ready, ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, dancing. But they don’t have to follow that format if that’s not what you want.

You could follow a traditional wedding timeline, or you could rearrange it completely to fit how you actually want to spend your time. Maybe that’s an intimate morning ceremony followed by a long afternoon with guests. Maybe it’s stretching your celebration across multiple days and planning a welcome dinner where everyone connects the night before, the wedding day itself, and a slower morning after with coffee and couple portraits.

If you go the multi-day route, know that a multi-day wedding isn’t just about adding more – it’s about creating space to breathe, to be present, and to let every moment unfold naturally. It’s about having enough time for connection, laughter, and community as well as adventure and intimacy. With multi-day weddings, there is no rushing, no splitting attention. Just time to feel it all.

How do you want to feel the day after your wedding?

A lot of couples spend months planning their wedding day down to the hour, but then forget to think about what happens when they wake up the next day. Do you want to immediately pack up, check out of your hotel, and jump on a plane for your honeymoon? Or would you rather have a slow, relaxed morning and enjoy coffee with your partner while taking in everything that just happened? The day after your wedding is a special day that deserves its own moment, with enough time and space to let it all sink in.

From a photography perspective: More time means more of those in-between moments – the ones where you’re not thinking about the camera, just living your day. And, a lot of times, that’s when the magic happens. Shorter timelines can be beautiful too, but they require being more intentional upfront about what we’re prioritizing.

See some sample wedding day timelines in our timeline planning guide. 

7. What do we want to remember most about our wedding day?

As intimate wedding photographers, this is one of those wedding planning questions that we help all our couples think through. Instead of just thinking about the “pretty photos”, ask yourself what moments, feelings, and parts of your story you want to remember forever.

Maybe you care most about epic portraits and the two of you standing in front of a dramatic landscape. 

Maybe you want to prioritize the connections between your family and friends – your grandmother’s face during the ceremony, your best friend ugly-crying during toasts, or everyone getting down on the dance floor together at the reception. 

Maybe it’s those private, intimate moments – the way your partner’s hands shake when they’re nervous or the emotions you feel when you exchange private vows. 

Maybe you want editorial-style images that capture the details you put so much thought into. 

Or maybe you want the full story told documentary-style, where every candid moment gets captured as it unfolds.

Most couples want some mix of all of these. But knowing which ones matter the most to you helps shape how we approach your day.

From a photography perspective: The more specific you can be about what you value, the better we can anticipate and capture those moments. If you tell us your grandmother’s reaction is everything, we’ll make sure we’re positioned to see her face during your vows. If golden hour portraits matter more than reception coverage, we’ll build the timeline around that light. And if one of you doesn’t love getting your photo taken, we’ll make the most of the time we have for portraits and get the images you need, so you can get back and enjoy your celebration with your guests.

8. How much planning help do we actually need?

Be honest with yourselves: Are you the kind of people who love planning and coordinating details, or does the thought of managing timelines and vendor communication stress you out?

For traditional weddings with more guests, vendors, and moving parts, a wedding planner or coordinator can be very valuable. They can handle logistics, keep your timeline on track, communicate with vendors, and troubleshoot problems so you don’t have to think about any of it on your wedding day.

For smaller celebrations or elopements, you might not need a full planner, but you may still need someone to help with location scouting, permits, timeline creation, and vendor recommendations. Sometimes your photographer takes on more of that role. Sometimes you hire an elopement planner who specializes in intimate celebrations.

The key is knowing what you’re willing (and able) to take on versus what you’d rather hand off to someone else. 

From a photography perspective: Couples who have the support they actually need (whether that’s a planner, a coordinator, or just the right vendor team) show up to their wedding day differently. They’re more relaxed. More present. Less worried about what’s happening next. And that shows in the photos. You can see it in their faces, their body language, and in how they move through the day. Getting the right help isn’t about having things be perfect, but about giving yourself space to actually be present.

9. What do we want our guests to experience?

Weddings are one of the rare moments in life when everyone you love is in the same room at the same time. Maybe that’s your childhood friends, your grandparents, parents, and extended family. Maybe it’s your chosen family. However it looks, these are the people who’ve shown up for you, who’ve shaped who you are, and who will keep showing up for what comes next. This gathering might not happen again, so what do you want them to experience while they’re there?

What do you want them to feel when they arrive? What do you want them to remember years later when they think about your wedding? How do you want them to witness and be part of your love story?

Maybe you want them to feel welcomed and cared for, like every detail was chosen with them in mind. 

Maybe you want them to feel the adventure of exploring a new place with you. 

Maybe you want them to witness something intimate and meaningful, not just attend another wedding. 

Maybe you want them to connect with each other, not just you and to leave having made new friends or deepened old relationships.

Your guest experience isn’t just about good food and dancing (though those are both amazing). It’s about what you’re inviting people into and how you’re inviting them to celebrate with you, whether it’s for a few hours or a multi-day experience. Whether it’s by asking them to witness your vows, or to participate in creating memories alongside you.

Thinking about this question allows you to intentionally plan your guests’ experience and create a celebration where people feel seen, valued, and like they truly matter.

From a photography perspective: When guests feel genuinely welcomed and engaged, it shows through in your wedding photos. The laughter is real. The tears are honest. And the energy is alive. As your wedding photographer, we are always looking to capture those raw moments of connection between you and your guests, and between guests themselves.

10. What makes this celebration uniquely ours?

If you’ve made it through all the other questions to ask when planning a wedding and taken the time to answer each, you probably have a clearer picture of what you want your wedding to look and feel like. But there is one more question that really ties everything together: What makes your celebration uniquely yours?

Not “unique” in the trendy sense (you don’t need to reinvent weddings or do something no one’s ever done before). But what makes it feel true to who you are as a couple? What elements, choices, or moments reflect your actual relationship, not just what you think weddings should include?

Maybe it’s the music you choose and how it tells your story. 

Maybe it’s the location that means something specific to you both. 

Maybe it’s incorporating customs or traditions from your heritage along with something you’ve created just for this day. 

Maybe it’s the people you’ve chosen to stand beside you, the words you’ll say to each other, or the way you’ve designed the day to feel like how you actually spend time together.

The most memorable celebrations aren’t the ones that follow every trend. They’re the ones where you can see the couple in every decision. Where nothing is done just for the sake of it, but because it feels honest and intentional to who you really are.

If you’re looking for ideas for how to make your celebration more personalized, check out our guide on how to make your wedding special.

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What Happens After You Answer These Wedding Planning Questions?

Now that you’ve answered these 10 wedding planning questions, it’s time to keep planning.

You might be feeling clearer about what you want, or you might feel overwhelmed by how many decisions still need to be made. Both are normal.

These questions aren’t meant to give you a finished plan – they’re meant to help you go from “we don’t know what we want” to “we’re starting to see what this could look like.” and this is the kind of vision you need before you can make decisions about vendors, venues, and timelines.

And that’s where having the right people in your corner matters.

We’ve photographed everything from intimate two-person elopements to weekend-long celebrations with dozens of guests. Some couples come to us with a crystal-clear vision while others need help discovering what they actually want. But no matter where they start, the couples who take time to plan have wedding days feel more present and intentional. And that presence creates the kind of photographs you’ll want to look at for the rest of your life.

Whether you’re planning an intimate elopement, a micro-wedding, or a multi-day celebration, we’d love to hear what you’re envisioning. Get in touch with us and let’s talk about creating an experience that feels like you.

More Wedding Planning Resources and Inspiraiton