Brandon and I will often laugh as my Type A personality often times gets the better of me, especially when we are setting off for a destination wedding. I am a planner. 

I’m one of those people who start planning out what their packing a week before we even leave. Brandon on the other hand will pack a few hours before setting sail, well at least he used too until my type A personality started to wear off on him. These days our business adventures are full of carefully planned minimal wardrobes, meticulously packed camera gear, advanced schedules and timed out stops. Everything is well thought out in advance leaving us with less stress and more freedom while traveling.

So here is what our prep looks like….

Upon Booking The Destination Wedding
As soon as we book a destination wedding our next step (the very next day) is to arrange our travel. We love to drive when ever possible, it gives us more exploring time while in rout to our destination and allows us to bring our dogs along. We typically rent an entire vacation home or apartment through Airbnb that is pet friendly. It so much nicer to have an entire place to yourself rather then just a hotel room.

If we need to fly then we will book our flight 60-30 days out (this is when fairs tend to be the best price). We also book a rental car and a hotel with our flight. If we fly our time spent in the location tends to be shorter.

A Week Out
If driving, Brandon and I will plan out our entire trip scheduling everything from what time we get up, workout, eat lunch, to time slots for uploading + editing photos. Next we check out the weather and plan out a minimal wardrobe that can be warn all week. We even schedule in a laundry day so we can pack very light on clothing. And last but not least we map out our drive and any awesome stops we want to make along the way. If we fly we do all the above except we plan out some time for sight seeing wherever our destination is since we can’t make stops on the flight all to easy;)

Two Days Before
We wash all our laundry and pack up all the clothing we have planned out for our trip.

The Day Before 
Brandon and I have two different setups for travel so the day before I pull out all my gear and he pulls out his.  First we make sure all our batteries are charged and ready to go, this includes camera, flash and pocketwizard batteries. Next we clean all our lenses and cameras.  We then formats all CF cards. We also make sure we have enough CFs card and then some for the wedding.

We also set out 2 battery chargers for our cameras, one regular battery charger (for our flashes) 2 phone chargers and 2 card readers.

Our laptop is added to the packing collection (now all laid out on our office floor) along with the laptop charger.

Once everything is double checked we pack up.

This is followed by cleaning our entire house, there is nothing better then coming home to a clean house after a long trip. We also prepare the next days breakfast in advance so it can be grab and go in the am. We place all our packed clothing and gear in the office so it to is grab and go.

If our pups are coming along we pack their dog food, dog beds and toys the night before as well.

Day Of
We wake up early grab our breakfast. Then carefully  pack the car making sure everything is there. I run though the house to make sure nothing is left behind.

Once we are in the car I like to send our couples a little text message to let them know we are in rout to their amazing wedding. A side note: we use Honeybook to manage all of our clients. This allows me to have our clients wedding timeline, phone numbers and emails all at a touch of a button.

 

We hope this gives you insight to planning in advance. It has worked extremely well for us and eliminates so much stress!

P.S. If we are flying we NEVER check our bags. Everything is packed into one standard carry on, a Pelican case plus I will carry on an oversized purse. This ensure that everyone makes it to our destination.