wedding photography tips...

just finished my first real wedding shoot...

• it's hard to be the photographer and a member of the bride's immediate family. everyone wants to talk to you!
• on the other hand, it's good because you know all the backstories and who's important to the bride and who isn't
• 3 shooters is WAY better than one
  
• photographic umbrellas and columbia river gorge winds do not mix
  
• batteries don't die, they overheat. using the lithium batteries with the 5th battery attachment on an sb800, i was getting less than one second recycle times for about 20 flashes, then poof! the batteries would just stop charging the flash altogether until they cooled...
• if you're bracketing and using RAW, you'll shoot all 480 pics on an 8GB card in about an hour. the d200 battery lasts about 480 pix, so it's nicely paired with the 8GB card
• don't let anyone else use your camera. i have AF completely disconnected from the shutter button, so my poor sister shot a bunch of really blurry pictures. carry a nice point and shoot and hand it to whoever wants to take their own pix
• 8GB of data does not come off a card quickly no matter what kind of reader you have. (more than 10 minutes on a direct, eXpress card slot reader).
• you can quickly become confused about 'which card has what and which has been downloaded and omg did i just format a card i wasn't supposed to?!' ergo a 16GB card is infinitely preferable to handful of 1 or 2GB cards
• d200 batteries take several hours to charge, having two per body was essential
• have a "safe corner" where children, dogs, wind, theives, etc cannot accost your gear. it needs a power outlet or seven
• we thought we'd use the laptop for proofing but that just didn't materialize. using the zoom on the back of the camera worked fine luckily
• polarizer is absolutlely essential for outdoor wedding
  
• at dusk the 85mm f/1.4 was the only lens taking decent pictures. fast glass rules!
  
• while this is obvious it bears repeating -- you can save an underexposed pix waaaaay better than an overexposed one
• use RAW with auto whitebalance for everything except maybe the staged group portraits. things move fast and you WILL forget to adjust the WB manually. this means hand-correcting LOTS of pictures which prolly would have been fine with auto
• ditto with auto ISO. things move fast and it's way better to have a grainy good pic than a blurry one
• at least once an hour shoot a pic of the sky or a wall and check for schmutz on the CCD. even if you're not swapping lenses.
• you brought a blower and CCD cleaner with you, right?
  
• a step ladder can let you get shots you'd otherwise miss, but you have to remember to use the darned thing
• don't forget the bride's list of "requested shots" on your desk at home ;)

UPDATE
i have a few more to add, now that i'm further through "the process"

• the primary product of a wedding shoot is physical photographs and books. unless the bride is an experienced photoshop user, you'll still end up on the hook to make sure those images look great on paper no matter what you agreed to beforehand.
  
• i shoot RAW on a d200 and then go straight to Aperture. on our initial print run (using the built in Apple/Kodak printing service) well over half of the images were just too dark. i ended up going back and boosting the Exposure setting on nearly every image i shot in order to make them look right on paper.