“How many hours do we actually need?” is the question we answer most, and the honest answer is: it depends on the shape of your day, not the size of your budget. Coverage hours are one continuous block — so the real question is which parts of the day live inside the block, and which get left at the edges.
The one rule: count backwards from the exit
Start from the last thing you want photographed — a sparkler exit, the last dance, or just the party in full swing — and walk backwards to the first thing you want photographed. That distance, plus a little slack, is your number. Everything else in this post is detail.
What lives at the edges of a wedding day
The middle of every wedding — ceremony, portraits, first dances, toasts — fits comfortably in six hours. What pushes couples to eight or ten is the edges:
- The front edge: getting ready, the dress on its hanger, first looks with dad, the room before anyone’s in it.
- The back edge: the staged exit, the last song, the golden-hour portraits that only exist if we’re still there when the light happens.
When six hours is genuinely enough
Six hours gets a surprisingly complete wedding when the day is compact. We photographed a wedding this spring that ran noon to six — a ceremony with just the two of them, then a thirty-guest reception on the same property. Six hours covered every minute that mattered, and paying for more would have bought photographs of an empty venue.
Six tends to be right when:
- Ceremony and reception are at one location — no travel eats your block
- Your guest list is under ~75 and the reception is dinner-and-dancing, not a marathon
- You don’t care about getting-ready coverage or a staged exit
When eight earns its money
Eight hours is the workhorse — it’s our most-booked package for a reason. It adds the front edge (getting ready, detail shots, the nerves and the hairspray) and keeps us deep enough into the reception for toasts, dances, and the dance floor once it’s properly going. If your ceremony and reception are at different places, eight is usually the floor, because travel time comes out of the block.
When ten is the right call
Ten hours is full-day coverage: prep through exit with no hard choices. It’s the right number when your guest list is big, your venue is worth the establishing shots, you want a real exit with everyone still there — or you simply don’t want to spend your wedding day doing arithmetic about the photographer’s clock. Our ten-hour package also includes bridal portraits, which deserve their own unhurried hour.
Three practical notes
- Hours are continuous. A gap in the middle of the day (looking at you, Catholic afternoon ceremonies with 7pm receptions) still counts — plan for it.
- You can add an hour on the day. With us it’s $200. If the party is peaking, we’d rather you extend than watch us leave.
- A second photographer stretches every hour. Two of you getting ready in two places at once is a second-shooter problem, not an hours problem.
If you want to sanity-check your own timeline, send it to us — we build personalized timelines for our couples anyway, and we’ll tell you honestly if you’re buying an hour you won’t use. The packages and exact prices are on the investment page.
