Why I built Daymarked.
I'm Peter, a wedding photographer based in Omaha, Nebraska. I built Daymarked because I was tired of building timelines with the two-window shuffle, and figured I couldn't be the only one.
Over the last 10 years I've gotten to photograph over 200 weddings, and it has truly been the highest point of my life. I love documenting those intimate moments my couples will cherish forever, and a big part of giving them a day they can actually enjoy is the wedding day timeline. Building a good one for my couples is one of the best services I provide, and it's something I always do.
See the work: Intrepid Visuals · @intrepidvisualsphotography
The problem was never that building timelines is hard. I'd been using the same Word template for years. The problem was the process. My couple would fill out their questionnaire, I'd skim it over, and then I'd close the tab and just sit on it. And the building was never even the worst part. The worst part was carrying it around. From the moment that questionnaire came in, some part of my brain kept poking at me about it until it was done.
When I finally gave in, usually on the couch in the evening with my fiancée and a show on, I already knew exactly how the next 40 minutes would go: questionnaire open in one window, my Word template in the other, copy-pasting each response over one line at a time, doing the same day math in my head I'd done a couple hundred times. The two-window shuffle.
Sometimes I would get incomplete information. The bride prep location was submitted as "at my mom's house" and I'd have to go back and forth to get the proper address. Then we'd have multiple versions of the exported timeline, and eventually we'd have our final meeting before the day and make last minute changes.
And once, the whole fragile system bit me. We made a big change on that final call, I forgot to export the updated version, and on the wedding day I found myself scrambling to open a Word doc on my phone, pinching to zoom in, trying to remember exactly what we'd agreed on.
That’s why I built Daymarked.
With Daymarked, building the timeline only takes about 10 minutes. Now when I get a questionnaire response, it flows right into the timeline, built backwards from the ceremony. It's the same math that we've all been using for every wedding.
When the timeline is finished, instead of going back and forth with multiple PDF versions, my couples get a link that always shows the most current version of their timeline, whether they're on a computer during our final pre-wedding meeting, or on their phone the day of. I can always print a clean PDF version the night before to have a hard copy, but now I'm not worried about if I have the right version anymore.
The biggest difference isn't even the ten minutes. It's that my brain has finally stopped reminding me about timelines. The loop closes, and the evening is mine again.
This is a tool that I built for my weddings first, but I know that I'm not the only wedding photographer who could benefit from this. I hope that other photographers can see how easy it is to build a timeline with Daymarked, and finally get their Sunday evenings back from the grind of building timelines by hand.
If that copy-paste routine sounds familiar, your first wedding is completely free, no credit card. Do your next timeline in it and see how it feels.
Start freeThanks for being here, it means a lot.
Peter Barnes, Wedding Photographer and Founder of Daymarked.