Getting a large group photo of everyone at your wedding can be pretty fun and is a surefire way getting everyone together in one shot. It is also one way of guaranteeing at least everyone who attended during the day was photographed at least once. However, depending on the size of your wedding guest list and the logistics of the venue and your day, it’s not the easiest shot to get.

It always works best from an elevated position, a first storey window is pretty perfect as it allows the photographer the best angle to capture everyone so you can see everybody’s face. Failing that, a wall or steps can work well to just get an elevated position for either the guests or the photographer so people can be seen in the photo.

Larger wedding parties of more than 100 guests can be very difficult, because the sheer number may make everyone all look a bit small in the shot and it will be hard to see absolutely everyone. There’s not much you can do about this, if you still want the shot, people at the back might just not be very easy to identify.  An alternative way of getting a similar shot is to maybe split people up, do ALL the girls and ALL the boys, which can be very fun and there’s usually a bit of boys vs. girls to get the better shot.

You’ll want to budget about 10-20 minutes  to organise (shepherd) everyone into position. This sounds like a crazy amount of time, but it will take considerable time to get everyone into place and it’s much better to over budget the time than to find you’re overrunning for the wedding breakfast! This can feel fairly demanding if you more interested in mingling with guests and having less ‘formal’ shots, particularly if you have a lot of guests and the best location for the shot is a short walk from one part of the reception to another. It’s not an essential shot, so if you’re not fussed about it or don’t think you have time, maybe ask your photographer to try and concentrate on getting a shot of everyone, rather than a shot with everybody in the same picture.

The best thing to do is try and find a good place to do it, with the help of your photographer, and ask your MC, Toastmaster, best man or ushers to help with the organisation of everybody. Your photographer can do this too, but will need to be ready and in position to organise and direct people and shoot the photograph. Make sure to get everyone cheering too, it may feel a bit cheesy but it will get everyone smiling and laughing because this makes it feel a lot more fun and will ultimately make a much better shot!

Another way of doing it is to combine the confetti shot with it as well. You might not see everybody in the shot, but this can work really nicely if you’re short on time.