Direct Sunlight for Bridal Party Photos - HELP

I would recommend flash FP or flash iTTL/balanced mode, if you had a stronger flash like SB800 or SB900/910.
Also, those flashes would have power to bounce lighting in most small to medium venues, with D7000 and other high ISO capable cameras.
I believe SB600 has much less power, and could be less suitable for this task, unless you boost the ISO.
Otherwise, you could use an asistant holding a large reflector and directing some sun light onto the subject.

You can actually use this type of light to your advantage. The trick is this; Place her where the background directly behind her is dark. It can be quite a distance away but needs to be darker. Trees, a building whatever. It's best performed with a longer lens (on a cropped sensor, something like the Tokina 50-135mm f2.8 would be ideal or a prime like the Nikon 85mm f1.8 etc).

You put the sun to her back and a bit off the camera axis (so you're not pointing the camera directly at the sun). Expose for her face in the shadow of the sun and this will balance nicely with the dark background. Shoot with the lens fairly wide open around f4 or more. You'll get a nicely exposed face/dress with hair highlights and since the sky isn't in the shot, the background won't be blown out. No flash is needed for this shot.
The other option of course is to use fill flash as much as possible. I strongly recommend you practice this with a friend before wedding day! Even better if you can go to the venue around the same time of day and similar light to practice.

Renee,
The problem you will be facing is not enough power for flash. I know when shooting in Sun, harsh shadows is the tough shot. If you had an assistant you could get them to hold a reflector to help fill the shadow areas but if you don't you can always ask someone in the Bridal party to do that for you. Another thing you could do is use a shoot through umbrella to control some of the sunlight. Just hold it over the person to filter some of that harsh sunlight. I know the old rule "Sunny 16" applies here. Yes, set your camera to manual and shoot F16. This is not the best setting for awesome bokeh but it does control the amount of light going into the camera. Set your ISO to 100, Shutter speed will control the amount of ambient light, faster, less light, slower, more light. You could probably shoot 1/250th or higher if its really bright out. I can't tell you what to setup exactly as I am unfamiliar with what type of photos you are going to try and shoot. These settings should work fine for scenic/group shots. For the Individual shots, you can change the settings. You can always set your camera's ISO to auto and shoot Aperture priority, this will a least let the camera do all the shutter speed changes and ISO changes, while you control the depth of field. I would shoot in Raw and need be, fix your photos in Photoshop or Lightroom. Watch where the shadows fall and use the flash to fill. I hope this helps. Remember to check your photos with every location change, this way you won't be surprised with incorrect settings if you move indoors. Good Luck!

Yes, any kind of frontal sunlight is going to give you some harsh shadows and, more importantly, people squinting. So putting the sun as Peter suggests is wise. Some fill flash will be needed - the SB600 should be OK for this if you are not too far away. Sunny 16 rule for subjects in open shade suggests f5.6 at 1/125th ISO 100. However, any part of the image in sunlight will be overexposed by up to 3 stops if you want to balance the exposure. The SB-600 in BL-TTL mode 'should' make a decent fist of this, but you need to practice first.

First of all, is this session the bride and groom's session or is the whole wedding, including pre-ceremony, ceremony, formals and bride and groom's session, going to be in the garden? It makes a difference if you have control over the proceedings or not.

Realize that there is no way to eradicate any shadows made by the sun--not even with fill flash, unless you want to 'nuke' the photo with tons of flash.

Therefore, your options, if you have no shade at all, are limited, re choice of backgrounds. This is because you need to turn the subject's faces (and fronts of their bodies) away from the sun, so that the important parts are in even shade, which limits background choicces. There can be no dappling and small hot spots on the subject 'fronts'.

Once you get this condition, you can decide to use fill flash or expose for the shadow side, with the caveat that whatever is lit by direct sun will be blown out. This could include hair, veils, sides of faces, and parts of the dress. This can be OK, or it can be disturbing (the blown parts)--you will have to decide, taking into consideration what the client will think about your blowing out parts of themselves. For the bride and groom's session this might be OK, even preferable. For formals, it might not be.

Tell us if you are familiar with fill flash, along with the specifics as asked about above.

If it's just the B&G or a few people I think using a big 4x6 ft reflector is the simple way to solve this. Reflectors are good because what you see is what you get.

Place the subjects so they are back lit, expose for the background using manual mode, use the reflector close to bring up the exposure on the subjects and if you like add the flash from the camera as well.

You might get a slight underexposure on the subject depending on how close you can bring the reflector. Don't worry about that. It's better to raise the last bit of the exposure in your raw converter because that way you can still retain detail in the highlights that way and you don't have to blow anything out by overexposing it. Since you are shooting at low ISO the noise added by this process is minuscule.

Another variation of this method is to use flash with shoot through umbrellas or big diffusion panels placed close. These will both reflect light like a reflector and add soft light from the flash. You must have radio triggers though. Also keep in mind that all kinds of reflectors and umbrellas are very difficult to use in windy conditions.

For large groups nothing you can do will really work because the amount of flash power or size of reflectors needed are beyond what most wedding photographers usually have access to or in their budget. It will all be a matter of making compromises.

This may seem silly to say, but I've seen people do it before. Remember when you are outside in the open, unless you have someone holding a reflector over you, you don't have a surface to bounce your light off of. So you have to either use something that will help to bounce the light forward, like an angled demb PJ flip it is my equipment of choice) or go with the dreaded straight on flash. Otherwise you are just sending flash up to the heavens, which does nothing to fill in shadows on faces.

I would just like as much advice as possible with the settings you use in direct sunlight or any tricks or tips to get the best photos (really worried about the shadowing on the face)

It is very difficult to give advice without "seeing" the light. I can't know how I am going to shoot something until I know under what conditions I am shooting! Part of being the photographer is being able to recognize the light and adapt as needed. That said, if the sun is to my back, directly hitting the subject (no clouds), worst case scenario... do you have a diffuser?! That would be my number 1 modifier in such a situation, using the SB600 as a bit of fill. If that is the situation, the SB600 is going to get hot fast and is already (for me) a bit slow to recycle. I might try to get both flash units on the same stand. Two flashes at 1/2 power will recycle faster than one flash at full power. If all you are using is CLS to control the flashes and you are in bright light, you will need to the flashes to be very, very close to the camera. You start pushing any distance and CLS will be useless in bright light. I seem to recall someone mentioning TTL radio, wireless triggers for under $100? But you would need a 2nd receiver for a 2nd flash. If it is bright sun, there is no use in modifying the flash. A) a shoe mount flash doesn't have the power to compete with the sun, let alone modifying it and B) you are only using the flash as fill: to raise the shadows, not blast them away.

A step stool is always a good idea. As mentioned, you don't want the sky in the frame if you can avoid it (assuming a bright, cloudless day). By shooting down, you can control this. If I am outside, I like to try to use longer lenses. This compresses the background so there is less of it to worry about. If 55mm is the longest you have, then that is what I would use. If you have longer, great. The issue there being trying to trigger your flashes (unless you have a radio trigger?).

Bottom line: the only way to make hard light soft is to modify it. If you can't modify it (diffusers) you can try to use fill flash to raise shadows. 2x SB600's might do the trick in direct sunlight. Avoid the sky. And of course the beginners advice: shoot Raw. Pray.

Brooke--can you give us more detail so we can better help you?