One of the most difficult first steps in hiring a wedding photographer is deciding how many hours of coverage you want the photographer to spend with you. Some photographers offer packages starting with just a few hours of coverage, while others have packages with 12 hours or unlimited time on your wedding day. Without knowing firsthand what a wedding day timeline will really look like, it can be hard to commit to a particular package with your favorite photographer, or even to get started researching photographers when you don’t have a clue what sort of package you should be looking for!

While the detailed timeline is generally a job for your wedding planner if you’re hiring one, we’ve helped countless couples get an idea of the rough timeline for their day to help them figure out which of our photography packages is the best fit for their needs.

The Starting Point for Your Wedding Day Timeline

The most important part of your day is the ceremony (duh). Everything else branches out from this point – when your reception should start, when you should arrive at the ceremony site, when you should start getting ready… This means a great starting point for determining what your general wedding day timeline will look like is to establish the time for your wedding ceremony. If you’re getting married in a church, this is generally an easy first step – they usually tell you what time you’re allowed to have your ceremony! It’s common for churches to offer options of, for example, a 9am, 12pm, or 3pm ceremony for a typical Saturday wedding – and most couples go with the afternoon option if they plan to have a standard dinner-and-dancing wedding reception. Or maybe you want to do a brunch wedding, with your ceremony in the morning and an early afternoon reception! Talk to the on-site coordinator for your ceremony site about your options for ceremony times if you haven’t already established it to see what sort of restrictions they might have.

If you’re doing your ceremony and reception all at the same location, or if your ceremony is at a venue that doesn’t have set times for wedding ceremonies, consider the season in which you’re getting married, whether you’re doing an indoor or outdoor ceremony, and how far apart your ceremony and reception sites are. You want to ensure your ceremony ends well before sunset if you plan to do portraits afterward. A great resource we use is the Golden Hour app which is free to download and incredibly helpful at determining what will be the best time of day for photographs. The “golden hour” in the evening is a great time to schedule your portraits (we tend to start on the earlier side of golden hour to be safe) which means to get the best portraits you should take the start of the golden hour time, subtract any time it takes to travel to your desired portrait location, then subtract 20-30 minutes for family formals after the ceremony at the ceremony site, and then subtract the expected length of your ceremony and voila – you have a general idea of the start time for your ceremony!

Of course, once you know the ceremony time, you only have one little piece of the puzzle – from here is where you determine everything else that factors into your wedding photographer’s timeline!

When Should the Photographer Leave the Reception?

One factor that definitely helps in determining how long you want your photographer on your wedding day is to consider the timeline of your reception and what you and your future spouse want photographed throughout the night. The end point of the photography services is easier to determine if you know when you don’t need them anymore.

First thing to consider – are you doing a send-off that should be professionally photographed? A super fun trend in weddings lately is to do a fun send-off at the end of the reception, often with sparklers, glow sticks, bubbles, streamers… It’s a great way to cap off a fun night, get a unique and dazzling photo or two, and to encourage your guests to stay that extra bit of time at the end when people are prone to leave the reception early! Deciding whether or not to do a send-off can be a whole separate conversation (or future blog post)!. Once you’ve decided whether or not a reception send-off is right for you, you’ll be one step closer to deciding how long into the reception your photographer should be present.

Do you want to capture as much of your guests as possible at the reception? The best time to do that is during dancing and socializing in the latter portion of the reception! It’s so much harder to capture much of guests during the more scheduled parts of the day because there is so much focus on you, and so many moving parts that don’t directly involve all of your guests. Allow plenty of time after dinner for photos if you want to capture those moments of you personally making your rounds at the guest tables and of everyone socializing and dancing and having lots of candid fun. Another part to consider is where your guests are coming from – lots of out of town guests are more likely to stay for a longer reception because they’re not just going home afterward (because who wants to leave a fun party just to sit in their hotel room?). Local guests are more likely to leave after the last of the big events if they’re not especially social or not going to do much dancing. Consider your guests, and if you want professional photography focused on them for a while.

Don’t care much about having someone professionally capture dancing and socializing? Particularly if you’re on a tighter budget, it’s perfectly acceptable to have your photographer only stay through the last of your most important events that you do want photographed – whether that’s the cake cutting, or the first dance, or the toasts in the middle of dinner. It’s still so important to value high quality photographs of those touching moments (plus they add to the story of your day, which we’ll get into later). If you plan to have a couple hours of dancing but the last of your planned events ends an hour or two into the reception, consider cutting off the photographer’s coverage after the last moment important to you.

The Big Reveal: Do You Want to do a First Look/First Touch?

One factor in your photographer’s start time, on the other hand, is going to be whether you want to do any sort of first look or “first touch” moment of prayer together. This option has become super trendy for a couple of reasons – one being that it can calm your nerves before the actual ceremony, and provide an intimate moment for the bride and groom before the busyness of the ceremony and reception kick in. If you’re considering this for your own wedding day, you can majorly reduce stress by scheduling a block of time before the ceremony – about 20 minutes is plenty for the moment on its own.

For couples who want to pray together or do just a “first touch” around a corner/door without seeing each other, you’ll want to build this in 20-30 minutes prior to the ceremony (and factor in any travel if needed). If you’re doing a full first look together, you can also budget additional time right after the first look to do some portraits of your wedding party and/or family. This allows more time after the ceremony for other portraits (especially if you want a ton of family formals, or if you want to use up as much of the golden hour light after the ceremony for the portraits of just you two). Or, if you get most of your portraits done before the ceremony, you can go enjoy cocktail hour with your friends and family! For some weddings, this is a great starting point in the photographer’s coverage – just be sure to plan for the photographer to arrive at least half an hour before your first look or first touch is planned to capture details and candids of you two separately before kicking things off with the first look/first touch.

Why Your Photographer Should Capture You Getting Ready Before Your Wedding

Oftentimes, we want our wedding photographer to capture the story of our wedding day. We look at photos chronologically from the ceremony through the reception, and we want to document as much as we can of the details that made it memorable and the people who celebrated with us. That entire story starts with how the bride and groom get ready for the wedding day and these moments can really add a storytelling feel to your images, especially if you plan to put together a wedding album. While some people (especially brides) may be nervous to include a bunch of photos of how they looked before they were dressed to the nines and ready to walk down the aisle, there are so many sweet moments before your ceremony that deserve to be captured to remember forever! Just a few of these getting-ready moments – the hair and makeup artist adding final touches to the bride’s face or her best friend who agreed to curl the bride’s hair because she’s a whizz at it; the groom and his groomsmen goofing off with the family dog at their home; the bride and her bridesmaids toasting with glasses of champagne; the groom’s father pinning on his boutonniere; the bride’s mom tearing up as she closes the buttons on the back of the wedding dress and all the bridesmaids cooing and awwing at how beautiful she looks as they see her as The Bride for the first time.

A professional can capture those fleeting moments and give you a photographic reminder of those sweet, quieter moments that started your day. This is also the best time to capture all those pretty details – the groom’s cufflinks and shoes, the bride’s dress and shoes, flatlays of the invitation suite and bridal jewelry, details of the wedding rings… Giving your photographer time before the ceremony to capture those details allows you to showcases those tangible items that contributed to the memory of your wedding.

So there you have it! Figure out your ceremony time, how long you want the photographer to be at the reception, and how early you want your photographer to start. Once you’ve got that start and end time, you know how many hours your photographer should be with you.

What questions do you still have about your wedding photography plan or your wedding day timeline? Leave a comment below or send us a message and we’re glad to answer your questions!