Wedding photography courses are in my opinion by far the best way to learn how to photograph a wedding.
Attending a wedding photography course will give you first-hand experience of many key aspects of photographing a wedding. You will learn the importance of preparation and its place in enabling you to take high-quality wedding images. Technical aspects will be covered, for example camera settings, aperture, shutter speeds and shooting with flash and natural light, or fill flash as many photographers will refer to it.
On a typical photography course you will learn how to deal with the bride arriving at the church, shooting during the ceremony and coping with all events during the wedding day. You will learn how to take formal and informal shots and groups.
There are many photography courses available, before you decide which one to attend it is important that you check out testimonials and references. Some courses will concentrate solely on taking photographs, whilst others will also include photoshop tutorials to teach you how to manipulate your wedding photography images after shooting. This is an important aspect which many photographers overlook when considering which course to attend.
Wedding photography courses are however often expensive and may be out of the reach of many amateur photographers. One way around this is to look for a course which has been recorded on video during an actual seminar.
There is obviously one disadvantage to this, and that is that you are not there to ask the professional wedding photographer questions on the day. However there are many advantages to this approach to learning wedding photography, one of these being that you can replay the course as many times as you like to ensure that you fully understand and appreciate the points being made and demonstrated.
I would highly recommend this method of learning, however you need to ensure that the provider of such a course is also willing to keep in touch with you and answer any questions that you may have after having watched the course.
Many photographers have asked me if I think that either attending a wedding photography course or watching the video of a course will be enough to allow them to start to pursue a wedding photography business. The answer to this is a most definite no. Attending or watching the photography course is indeed a key part of your learning, however you must take action and put into practice what you have learned from the course.
Ideally you should practice with friends or family who are willing to pose as models for you, this will allow you to put into practice the methods and techniques that you have learnt from the wedding photography course.