How many hours of wedding coverage do you really need?

Advice to help you decide on photography coverage for your wedding day from Wisconsin wedding photographer, Rachel Jensen Photography.

First things first, let’s not rely on some social media influencer to know what YOU need for YOUR wedding. That goes for more than just photography by the way. You may not know what’s right for you, but neither do they. Talk to professional vendors in your area that have experience with your needs.

So what are your needs? The absolute best thing you can do IF you have the budget for it is find a wedding planner you connect with. If your budget is close but you have to give some things up, really think about if you need those things to have the wedding you want. Prioritize the planner if you can be happy without those things.

If you can’t have a planner – and most of my couples don’t – sit down and list out your overall priorities for your wedding day. It might be having everyone there you love. It might keeping it small and intimate. Maybe you prioritize beauty and the venue and décor is top of the list. You may want to prioritize the guest experience or time with your guests. Of course a constant consideration and sometimes top priority is budget.  Then break it down by vendor category and list your priorities for that niche.

For a bit more help those vendor categories could include:

• Venue
• Food/drink
• Photography
• Videography
• Décor/florals
• DJ/music
• Hair & makeup
• Wardrobe
• Guest Experiences (photo booths, yard games, make-your-own stations)

Alright then, on to the photography part.

Here’s the absolute bullet points and if you’d like a more detailed break down, read on after them.

• 4 hours of coverage
  • Pros – the budget and you should get your photos back a little quicker with less volume to edit.Cons – you’re missing a lot of your moments if the wedding itself is a full day event
  • Good For Couples Who: Are doing a micro wedding that will be short itself, are truly eloping, or are just on a very tight budget and are willing to settle for cell phone pix of most of the day.
• 6 hours of coverage
  • Pros – You can decide what parts are most important to you and focus on them. IF you’re not super big on photos in the first place, you’re not filling your gallery with things you don’t “need” photographed like details or the dance floorCons – You have some hard decisions to make as to where your photography is needed. There’s a high potential for regret later at not having professional photos of certain times of your day.
  • Good For Couples Who: Are having an evening ceremony, are not doing a dance, have a fairly small wedding, or are confident in their disinterest in having photos of the whole day.
• 9+ hours of coverage
  • Pros – Everything that you spent months and months planning will be photographed so you can remember it forever. All the special moments are captured and you don’t have to worry about missing out.Cons – mostly the budget. Wedding photography is expensive. It also can’t be redone and it’s the only thing you have left the next day.
  • Good For Couples Who: Have a traditional length and size of their wedding day, put photography fairly high on their priority list, want their memories to be in a quality format that will last forever.

Want more info? Here we go….

Parts of the wedding day for me fall into 5 photography categories;

Preceremony, Ceremony, Family Formals, Wedding Party, and Reception.

It’s most likely that you want pieces of all these parts photographed professionally. Let’s talk about what each of these entail and the time it takes to photograph each part of the day minimally and to the max.

Preceremony:

This is different for everyone. But what it could include for photo purposes is bridal details, groom details, getting ready, first look with dad, and a couple first look if you choose to do one. If you want all of those things you need over 2 ½  hours of photo time.

Ceremony:

It’s more than how long your service is, but that’s the main part. However you do need to consider the processional/recessional time which grows with wedding party size. Add 15 minutes to your expected service time. Also if you choose to have a receiving line (shorter answer – don’t) those take a lot more time than you may think.

Family Formals:

This is another one that changes drastically depending on you and your family size. I suggest we keep this to a max of 20 minutes. For large families this means you’re not including aunts and uncles. For very small families you may be able to or you may choose to save the time. If there are very large families involved and you want everyone included, it could easily be 45 minutes of your day. If they’re a wily bunch, add another 15.

Wedding Party:

This could be done before the ceremony if you have a first look or it would be after family formals. Your couple portraits and your photos with your whole wedding party fall in this time. The very minimum is if you don’t have a wedding party and you don’t want that many portraits of just the two of you. Then give me 15 minutes and we can be good. Looking at the maximum side though it could be much longer. A large wedding party of more than 5 couples that are game for doing all the fun and goofy stuff, multiple locations that require travel from ceremony to venue with another stop and a desire to have a ton of the two of you can put this time stamp up to 2 hours or more.

Reception:

This includes cocktail hour, dinner and dance. If you want to be at your cocktail hour you need to add in photography time for it. Cocktail hour is often when you’re out doing couple portraits in which case you don’t need to consider it in your photography timeline. Dinner however you’ll need to be at. 50 guests doesn’t take very long to serve but 250 means dinner can be 2 hours. You can be out mingling, I can be getting candids of people, we might even use some of that time for your couple portraits. But dinner is dinner and I can’t control how long that’s going to take. Talk to your venue/caterer on that one.

Then we have your special dances (first dance, daddy/daughter, mother/son). Lastly we have party dancing. If you want your full wedding day covered you should have at least an hour of dance coverage. A lot can be happening off the floor at this time as people are loosening up and it sometimes takes a few songs for the dancers to be ready to hit the floor. If your guest list consists of a whole bunch of people who love to cut loose, you may want to up this coverage to two hours. If during this time you have other areas of guest entertainment like dessert trucks, s’more stations, yard games, AND you have a party crowd AND the guest experience has been a priority of yours from the beginning, you might want three hours or a second shooter.  

And of course….

You should always be able to reach out to your photographer about photo timelines. Let’s make sure you have the photos you want and the day you’ve dreamed of! I can do that for you! Head over to the wedding page of my site here.