Hiring a wedding photographer is a big deal. A couple will use photographs as a way of remembering the wedding they spent so long planning, and they will subconsciously place a great deal of importance on the photographer's shoulders. There is a wealth of San Diego wedding photographers with years of experience who know what to expect and which images the bride and groom will want to look back at, but surprisingly wedding photos are still one of the biggest wedding day regrets as reported by San Diego brides in a recent survey.

Here are five things you should always clear with your photographer before the wedding day starts, to ensure you have a perfect, regret-free photo album to look back on.

Make a guest list

The first rule a wedding photographer should adhere to is to ensure that everybody in the wedding party is photographed, from the first to the last guest. There should be at least one photo of each attendee, outside of large group shots, that could be useable in a wedding album. But the rule shouldn't end there. Weddings bring people together who normally wouldn't be able to find the time to be there, and often this is a perfect photo opportunity that gets missed. A bride should consider this and make a list of photo groupings that the wedding photographer needs to pull together.

Draw up a timeline

Your wedding day may start from the moment you wake up. It is not uncommon for the bridal party to have the morning's events planned to pamper and calm the bride, with many traditions being exercised. A photographer should be clean on what the bride and groom want the photo album to suggest. If they want to remember the whole day, it may be worth having the photographer visit both the bride and groom on the morning to capture some of those precious moments of excitement before they finally get to see each other as husband and wife.

Be realistic and allow time than your original estimate

While 2 hours for photos after the ceremony might seem more than enough for a medium-sized wedding party, brides often complained afterwards that some of the slower moving family members didn't get to be involved in the group shots. A photographer should be very on timings for the group photo opportunities so that group time is maximized, and it may be worth discussing locations and realistic times it will take to move the group into these positions.

Allow control

It can be easy to fall into a false sense of security when trusting a professional photographer to organize your family and friends. People, by nature, can differ greatly in temperament, and one friend who seems mild-mannered to you may not give the same leniency to a stranger with a camera. It is important to let a photographer know where the boundaries lie in taking control of a situation where a guest may be uncooperative to the photographer's demands. Even though it can seem redundant, there is a lot of value in reassuring the photographer that he has the right to speak up in order to get the a shot you have requested.

Visit the location

Finally, a very beneficial part of the planning might be to visit the location with the photographer and ask how he plans to use the venue. Many brides have a clear idea of how they want the images to look without realizing that the photographer may not share the same vision. Pointing out areas of interest to the photographer will help illustrate the types of backdrops desired for the wedding photographs, ensuring that the photographer's artistic license will be based on an idea of what the outcome should look like.