For a long time, I priced wedding photography the same way most photographers do. You pick a certain number of hours, I show up for those hours, and when the time is up, I'm done. It's simple, it makes sense on paper, and it's more or less the standard way wedding photography has been sold forever. The problem is that after photographing a bunch of weddings that way, I've realized I don't really like it.
Weddings are unpredictable. Hair and makeup run late, somebody forgets something at the hotel, the ceremony starts 20 minutes behind schedule, or maybe dinner takes longer than expected. Sometimes the timeline is running perfectly and then we get an absolutely ridiculous sunset at exactly the wrong time and decide that maybe everyone can wait five minutes while we go make a photo.
That's just how weddings work, and honestly, it's part of what I like about photographing them. But when photography is sold in strict blocks of time, every one of those little delays starts eating away at something else. If you've booked six hours of coverage and the morning runs 45 minutes behind, we don't magically get those 45 minutes back. Eventually something has to give.
I've been on enough wedding days with shorter coverage to realize that I almost always leave wishing we'd had more time. Not because I needed another two hours to drag the couple around making portraits. Usually it's the opposite. More time means I can relax a little bit and let the wedding happen.
Maybe we don't have to rush through getting ready because I'm worried about making it to the reception. Maybe we can spend ten minutes making a portrait instead of trying to do it in three. Maybe you can actually enjoy cocktail hour for a while instead of disappearing with me because we're trying to cram every photo into the schedule before my coverage ends.
And maybe when the dance floor finally gets going later that night, I'm still there to catch you cutting up a rug.
That's the part that has bothered me the most about hourly coverage.
If your timeline gets behind and your parent dances haven't happened yet, I don't want to be standing there looking at my watch because I'm technically supposed to leave in 15 minutes. I don't want to miss something important because you bought eight hours instead of ten, and I really don't want to interrupt you in the middle of your wedding to ask whether you'd like to spend another few hundred dollars to keep me there longer.
That whole interaction just feels weird to me. It feels cheap, and it devalues the experience for both parties. You hired me to photograph your wedding. I'd rather just photograph the whole damn thing and tell the full story of your big day.
Full-day coverage doesn't mean a full-day photoshoot
This is probably worth clarifying, because when I say full-day coverage I absolutely do not mean that I plan to follow you around with a camera in your face for twelve straight hours. Having more time actually allows me to do less of that.
The way I like to photograph weddings is a mix of creating great portraits when it makes sense to create them and then getting out of the way and documenting everything else as it actually happens. I don't want your memories of your wedding to mostly involve me telling you where to stand.
When I'm not trying to squeeze a ten-hour wedding into six hours, there's room for things to breathe. If we're running behind, we're running behind. We'll adjust. If you're hanging out with people you haven't seen in years, I'm not going to immediately drag you away because my spreadsheet says portraits start at 4:15.
If the light outside suddenly looks incredible, we can go take advantage of it. And if something completely unexpected happens at the reception, which is usually where some of my favorite photographs come from anyway, there's a much better chance I'm going to be there to photograph it.
That's how I want to work.
So I stopped pricing weddings by the hour
Going forward, I'm not going to ask couples to guess how many hours of photography they need. For a traditional wedding, I'm offering full-day coverage.
We'll talk about your plans, build a timeline together, figure out when it actually makes sense for me to arrive and when it makes sense for me to call it a night, and I'll photograph the day accordingly.
There are obviously reasonable limits to that. "Full day" doesn't mean you can have me show up at 5:00 in the morning and keep me until the bars close at 2:00 a.m. But I also don't think your photography coverage should be dictated by an arbitrary number on a package when your actual wedding day needs something different. Your day sets the schedule.
There are still weddings where shorter coverage makes perfect sense. If you're having a small ceremony with 25 people followed by dinner at the same location, you probably genuinely don't need me for the entire day. That's why I'll continue offering custom coverage for micro weddings and smaller celebrations.
What I don't want to do anymore is take a normal, full wedding day and try to shoehorn it into a six-hour photography package because six hours happens to fit someone's budget better. I've done that before. It usually leaves me feeling rushed, it puts unnecessary pressure on the couple, and at the end of the night I almost always feel like I could have told their story better if we'd simply had enough time to do it properly.
That's really what this comes down to
I want to do my best work for the people who hire me.
Sometimes that means spending time setting up a portrait and making sure everything is exactly where I want it. A lot of the time it means shutting up, watching what's happening around me and being ready when something worth remembering happens. Both of those things get harder when I'm constantly thinking about the clock.
After enough weddings, I've realized that I don't want to build my business around squeezing as much as possible into the smallest package somebody can afford. I want to build it around giving people the kind of wedding photography experience that I would actually want to provide, and that I would want to receive if I were the one getting married.
So when you hire me for your wedding, you're not buying eight hours of my time. You're hiring me to photograph your wedding day. And when I finally put the cameras away at the end of the night, I'd much rather do it because we've told the story than because the clock says I'm done.
If this simple, no-nonsense approach to wedding photography resonates with you, then I'd love to chat.
Get in Touch
No clock watching. Just your wedding.
