Every year around the whole daylight savings times, natural light photographers begin stressing the importance of choosing the right ceremony time to ensure photos can still be taken after using that gorgeous natural light we all know and love. This being the third year of doing weddings, I wanted to go a little into what I’ve learned as well as give suggestions to brides and grooms looking to plan the perfect ceremony time yet still have beautiful photos outside after without worrying about running out of light.
I remember the first wedding I ever had where I hadn’t thought about the whole sun going down thing. I was new to the industry and still learning. This was a late fall wedding, and sunset was right around 7:15, but their ceremony was at 7pm… As soon as the ceremony was over, I quickly ran through family formals and bridal party shots, but by the time we could do the bride and groom portraits, our sun was entirely gone. My heart was broken as I tried to figure out the best way to provide my wonderful clients with memorable images they could love. Thankfully we had a street lamp nearby as well as my flash, so we still rocked it, but the bride said she wished we’d considered that timing a bit better so she could have gotten sunset photos.
When couples book their venues, they usually just grab a time for the ceremony that sounds good to them without really planning on the cocktail hour portraits. I’ve had several sit-downs with clients to go over the “what-if”s, and wanted to just write those here for other brides to learn from and consider, especially with daylight savings approaching.
When November hits, we are going to notice that the sun will usually start setting by 5pm. If you have a ceremony time at 5pm, it will be completely dark by the time your cocktail hour portraits begin. My suggestion would be to move that ceremony time to around 3pm so you can allow yourself plenty of time after the ceremony to grab those family formals, bridal party images, and of course just the two of you together!
If you are very keen on having your ceremony at sunset, I would strongly suggest considering a first look with your love. With these, you get to use that yummy light before the ceremony to capture the shock of your fiance’s face as they see you for the first time, and we would move into doing the couples photos directly after! This is such a great option for everyone, and could truly be the make or break in having those perfect naturally well-lit images of the two of you that you will cherish for eternity.
My suggestion is to look up the estimated sunset for your wedding day and count back two hours to determine your ceremony time. An example would be that currently our sunset is at 7:30pm. Two hours before would place your ceremony at 5:30pm, ending around 6pm or so, and then that would give you from 6pm until 7pm for cocktail hour to grab those beautiful photos! A good resource for this is http://www.timeanddate.com/
Thanks so much for stopping by, and hope this helps with determining the perfect times for your big day!