WEDDING HINTS & TIPS | HOW MANY HOURS SHOULD YOU BOOK A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER FOR?
How Many Hours Do You Need Me For?
So you’ve found your wedding photographer (hopefully me! 😊), and now you’re trying to figure out how many hours of coverage you’ll need on the big day.
When it comes to wedding photography coverage, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer — it really depends on the shape of your day and what moments you want captured.
Start by asking yourself this:
Do you want coverage from morning prep through to the wild dancing?
Or are you after something shorter, like just the ceremony and a few key moments afterwards
What Most Couples Choose
The two most popular coverage options with my couples are 8 hours or 10 hours — and the choice usually comes down to one thing:
Timing and locations.
For most couples, the ceremony time is the biggest factor in deciding how much coverage they’ll need. Here’s how it typically plays out:
If your ceremony is earlier in the day (around 12pm–1pm), and you want prep through to first dance (and a bit of dancing after), 10 hours is probably the best fit.
If your ceremony is later (around 2pm–3pm), 8 hours might cover everything nicely from getting ready to the start of the evening party.
Things to Consider
Here are a few questions to help you figure out what you need:
Do you want morning prep included? (Hair, makeup, pre-ceremony nerves?)
Do you want the full story into the night, including first dance and dancefloor chaos?
Are your ceremony and reception in different locations? Travel time may affect coverage.
Do you have key moments happening later in the day, like sparklers or fireworks?
If your day is a bit more spread out, adding a couple of extra hours might make sense — and I can always create a bespoke package if you fall somewhere in between.
Want help deciding? Just send over your ceremony time and rough plans, and I can walk you through what would work best for your day.
An Example of a Six-Hour Wedding Day - 2pm Ceremony
Six hours of coverage is perfect for smaller weddings, intimate celebrations, or elopements — especially when the ceremony and reception are at the same venue.
This is the shortest coverage I offer, and it’s ideal if you’re planning a more compact timeline or simply don’t need every part of the day photographed.
That said, anything shorter than 6 hours tends to cut out key parts of the story — like the final moments of prep, candid guest reactions, or the start of the evening. With six hours, you’ll still get a solid narrative of your wedding day without feeling too rushed.
12.30pm Coverage Starts (Getting Ready)
2 pm Wedding Ceremony
4 pm Wedding Breakfast
6 pm Wedding Speeches
6.30 pm Coverage Finishes
The example above gives a rough idea of how six hours of wedding coverage might look in practice.
Typically, my 6-hour coverage starts with a bit of getting ready and runs through until just after the speeches. But the key thing to remember is: you can tailor those hours to suit your day.
It’s all about deciding which moments are most important to you.
If you’re not too fussed about morning prep, you could shift that time to later in the day — meaning we could instead cover moments like the cake cut and first dance, depending on your timeline.
With shorter coverage, it’s especially helpful to plan things out in advance — so we can make sure the hours we spend together are focused on the parts of the day you care about most.
An Example of a Eight-Hour Wedding Day - 2pm Ceremony
1 pm Coverage Starts
2 pm Wedding Ceremony
4 pm Wedding Breakfast
6 pm Wedding Speeches
7 pm Evening Reception Starts
8 pm Cake Cut & First Dance
8.15pm DJ / Disco
9 pm Coverage Finishes
As you can see from the example above, eight hours of wedding photography coverage works really well for most weddings — but it does have its limits.
If your ceremony is at 2pm, that typically means there’s only time for a very short amount of morning prep coverage — maybe 30 minutes or so. And if your ceremony and reception are in different locations, things can get tight quickly. With an 8-hour package, there’s very little room for travel time, so having everything at one venue is ideal.
It’s a solid choice if you want the story of your day captured from just before the ceremony through to the start of the evening — but if you’re keen to include more of the morning build-up or dancefloor action, 10 hours might be a better fit.
An Example of a Ten-Hour Wedding Day - 2pm Ceremony
12 pm Coverage Starts - Getting Ready
2 pm Wedding Ceremony
4 pm Wedding Breakfast
6 pm Wedding Speeches
7 pm Evening Reception Starts
8 pm Cake Cut & First Dance
8.15 pm DJ / Disco
10 pm Coverage Finishes
With the 10-hour coverage example above, you can see how it allows for a more complete story of your day — starting earlier in the morning with plenty of time for getting ready, and with enough flexibility to cover any travel between your prep location and the ceremony venue.
This extended coverage also means I can stay longer into the evening — perfect if you’re having a summer wedding, when the party tends to get going a bit later. Guests are usually outside enjoying the warm weather, and the real dancefloor energy often kicks in after sunset.
With 10 hours, you get the best of both worlds: relaxed coverage in the morning and plenty of time for the fun, emotional, and often hilarious moments that happen once the formalities are over.
Wedding Ceremony BEFORE 2 pm?
If your wedding ceremony is before 2pm and you’d like coverage of both getting ready and some of the evening party, then 10 hours of coverage is your best option. It gives us the time and flexibility to capture all the key moments without rushing — from the morning prep through to the dancefloor fun later on.
Wedding Ceremony AFTER 2 pm?
If you’re having a later wedding ceremony and still want a bit of getting ready coverage along with some dancefloor action in the evening, then eight hours of coverage could be the perfect fit. It gives you a nice balance without going overboard, as long as everything runs fairly smoothly and is all in one place.
Need Something Between Four / Eight / Ten Hours or longer?
If you’re thinking about booking me as your wedding photographer but need something in between my standard packages, that’s absolutely no problem.
My pricing is designed to be flexible, so you can easily work out the cost of seven, nine, or even twelve hours of coverage — whatever fits your day best. Whether you need a little extra time in the morning or want to extend into the late-night dancing, I can tailor the coverage to suit your plans.
Just let me know what your day looks like, and I’ll help figure out what makes the most sense.
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