Almost every enquiry I receive asks about hours before it asks about anything else. It is the wrong first question, but it is a completely reasonable one, so here is the honest answer.
Most weddings need ten hours. A lot of weddings would be better served by eight. Almost nobody needs fourteen.
Work out what you actually want photographed
Coverage is not a number, it is a decision about where the day starts and stops. Write down the first thing you want a photograph of and the last thing you want a photograph of, then count the hours between them. That is your answer, and it is usually smaller than you feared.
The two ends of the day are where the hours quietly disappear:
- The morning. Do you want the getting-ready hours, or do you want it to begin with the dress going on? That is a two-hour difference on its own.
- The night. The first dance is usually the last genuinely new photograph of the day. Everything after it is the same photograph of a dance floor, taken later and later.
An extra hour at the end of the night buys you more of what you already have. An extra hour at the start buys you something you cannot get any other way.
Eight hours
Right for an intimate wedding, a register-office ceremony with a long lunch, or any day where the dancing is not the point. Typically: the dress going on, through the ceremony and the meal, finishing shortly after the speeches with golden-hour portraits.
What you give up: the early morning, and the dance floor.
Ten hours
The one most couples want, and the one I book most. A slow start with real time in the morning, the whole ceremony and celebration, sunset portraits, the first dance, and half an hour of the party afterwards.
This is the shape that covers a full traditional day end to end without paying for photographs of a dance floor at midnight.
Twelve hours or a whole weekend
Worth it when the wedding genuinely is more than one day — a welcome dinner, guests staying on, a morning-after breakfast. Not worth it simply to extend the night.
If you are considering twelve hours only because the party goes late, consider ten hours plus a second photographer instead. You will get more, for less.
The first hour and the last. One of them is harder to get back.
Three things that waste hours
A gap you did not plan for. Ninety minutes between the ceremony and the meal, with nothing happening, is ninety minutes of coverage spent photographing people holding drinks. If the gap is unavoidable, shorten the coverage around it rather than paying through it.
Family groups without a list. Twenty minutes with a list. Fifty without one. There is a whole entry about this.
Getting ready in two locations twenty minutes apart. This costs a full hour of driving and it buys you nothing. If you can, get ready in the same building.
And one that saves them
A first look. Not for everybody — plenty of couples want the aisle to be the moment, and they are right to. But if you are relaxed about it, seeing each other privately beforehand moves your couple portraits and half your family photographs into the morning, and hands the whole evening back to you.
How to decide
Send me your rough plan before you choose a collection. I will tell you honestly which hours are worth buying and which ones are not, even when that means recommending the smaller number. It usually does.
— Amanda