How Many Hours of Wedding Photography Coverage Do You Need?
If getting beautiful imagery from your wedding is important to you, it is crucial that you figure out how many hours of wedding photography you would need on your day before you book your wedding photographer. Not booking enough hours on your day may result to not getting the quality of photos you’ve expected to receive. It may also mean you increase the likelihood of rushing and being stressed — instead of enjoying the moment — just so you can squeeze in all the photos you want in the limited time you have.
You might also end up compromising your wedding reception schedule. Which is not the ideal thing to do because a.) your guests will be starving and most importantly, b.) dinner service is a highly coordinated event and the quality of the food depends on that coordination being performed well. No one is going to be happy served with bad food.
The first step to determining the number of hours you need is to identify what types of coverage you would want included on your wedding photos. There are five types
Five Types of Coverage on a Wedding Day
1. Bride’s Coverage
The Bride’s Coverage is also commonly referred to as the “Getting Ready” shots of the bride before the wedding ceremony. I love doing the Bride’s Coverage because I get to capture candid moments of the bride with her bridesmaids and her family. Other things I usually shoot around this time are:
– Detail shots of the wedding gown, the floral bouquet, shoes, and accessories that the bride will wear.
– Portraits of the bride alone.
– Portraits of the bride with her bridesmaids.
– Portraits of the bride and her family.
Recommended amount of time: 2 hours
2. Groom’s Coverage
Similar to the bride’s coverage, the Groom’s Coverage entails photos of the groom getting ready with his groomsmen before the ceremony. I prefer shooting a wedding with the groom’s coverage included as it tells a complete story of your day. During the groom’s coverage, I would shoot:
– Candids of the groom and his groomsmen as they get ready.
– Detail shots of the boutonniers, cuff links, watch, etc.
– Portraits of the groom alone.
– Portraits of the groom and his groomsmen.
– Portraits of the groom and his family.
Recommended amount of time: 1 – 1.5 hours
3. Wedding Ceremony
The amount of time you need depends on how long your service is going to be. The average time I’ve found over the years have been 30 minutes, though I’ve done ceremonies as long as 1 hour.
4. Portraits
Portraits are divided into two types — Family Formals and Wedding Portraits
a.) Family Formals
The amount of time you’ll need depends on how many groupings you have planned to take. Usually, it takes 3-5 minutes to take a photo of one group. So for family formals with 10 groupings, it can take as little as 30 minutes if your families are organized, 50 minutes otherwise.
b.) Wedding Portraits
This time is allotted for the portraits of you and your wedding party, and of just the bride and groom alone. I recommend having these photos done away from the guests – just so you don’t get stopped during the process – so we may have to include traveling to another location to get this done. Keep in mind that creative portraits cannot be rushed. As much as we, as photographers, would want to turn on our creativity with the blink of an eye, we do need time to really get the creative juices going. Professional photographers can do the safe shots with their eyes closed but if you really want portraits worthy of becoming pieces of art, the right amount of time is required.
Recommended amount of time: 2 hours including possible travel in between locations.
5. Reception
The number of hours you need here depends on how much you want covered. If you only want the first hour of reception covered, you’ll be able to get the wedding party introduced and the first dance photographed. Maybe do a pretend cake cutting if you like. But if you choose coverage up to 10 pm or over, I will usually be able to capture the entrance, emotional speeches, the first dance, and the first part of the dance party.
So let’s say you have one wedding photographer, your wedding ceremony is at 4pm, and you want both the bride and groom’s (or bride/bride, groom/groom) coverage. This is how I would recommend your schedule to look like, giving enough time for your wedding photographer to do their job. This would also allow for some leeway in case something goes awry to derail the schedule and you’ll still be on time for your wedding dinner to start as planned.
11:30 am – Groom’s Coverage
1:30 pm – Bride’s Coverage
4:00 pm – Wedding Ceremony
4:30 pm – Portraits
6:30 pm – Dinner
12:00 pm – Reception Coverage ends.
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Total: 11.5 hours
I hope this article was able to answer the questions you had in mind. If you find this useful, please feel free to click on the “Like” or “Share” buttons below!
