Yesterday was the first wedding of the season for me...though with only seven weeks off since the last wedding of 2006...I didn't have time to get too rusty. But I do have an "experience is the best teacher" tip based on something that happened to me.

I'm a bit old-fashioned when it comes to formal portraits at church ceremony weddings. If time and the church permit, I will set up my Photogenic monolights to create my on location studio and images that rival medium format studio quality shots. Sure, it's a bit of a pain to lug the extra gear around but, for my clients, it's worth it. I was shooting in an old church so I was concerned that I'd need ground lifts (or 3-prong adapters) to power my lights if this church didn't have grounded electrical outlets. So it's always good to have a couple of those adapters handy.

What ruined my plan to use the monolights was another evil twist -- all of the outlets near the altar were dead. I had to use battery powered strobes (sigh) to get my formal shots. It occured to me that I should have checked these outlets when I popped in for the ceremony rehearsal the night before. I could have either brought along one of those handy little outlet testing devices...but even just taking one of my battery charges and a battery would have told me I had dud outlets as far as my extension chords could reach.

So...I've updated my "pre-flight" wedding checklist to verify power availability (more than just checking to see where the outlets are) at the church! Hope you can learn from my experience!