How much time should you allocate for your location portraits?

The short answer is about 1.5 to 2 hours for most weddings, but if you think your needs and preferences are a little different to this, you can have as little or as much as you wish because our photography and video packages allow for any type of wedding plan.

How do we define "Location Portraits"? This will be the time spent photographing the bride and groom, and the bridal party. The location could be either the same place as the ceremony or reception, or could be another location(s).

Our estimation of 1.5 to 2 hours is the total time allocated to the schedule, and includes travel and idle time. There's usually some Travelling Time and what we call Idle Time. Actual shooting time could be as little as half of the total time allocated, especially if there's more than one location to drive to.

If you are having your location portraits in the same location as either the ceremony or the reception, you can either save that time from the schedule, or you might choose to spend more time on the portraits.

Travel time: this will vary depending on the distances between locations and number of locations.

Idle time: during any portrait shoot there's some time spent walking to and from locations, time spent having a drink, adjusting the veil or getting sand out of your shoes if we've been at a beach!

For every location visited, there could be around 15 minutes lost to parking, walking to the location, fixing the dress or veil, having a drink etc. Allowing for this extra time means you will allow enough time to have a relaxing and enjoyable portrait shoot, and you will have enough time to get all the shots you planned for.

EXAMPLE WEDDINGS

A typical wedding day: around 2 hours allocated to the portraits

For a typical wedding, 2 hours is enough time, and will likely get you about 60 minutes of actual shooting time.

Add some time for travel and, for 95% of weddings, you will usually end up with a little over two hours from when you leave the guests at the ceremony to when you see them again at the reception. Another rule of thumb is to allow three hours from the start of your ceremony to the start of the reception, but make adjustments to this if you know you have more travelling or a longer ceremony than average.

The very quick portrait shoot: around 15 minutes + travel and idle time

This is for the wedding where the bride and groom want just one or two good portraits and where the wedding is photographed in a photojournalist style. Most couples who have this style of wedding have been married before and really aren't interested in having 50 photos of just themselves. Required time would be 15 minutes of actual photography time plus travel and idle time.

The quick shoot: around 30 minutes + travel and idle time

If you are planning a wedding where you have just a small number of guests and you don't want to keep the guests waiting for 1.5 hours, or if you just don't want lots of portraits, you would probably prefer just 30 minutes (actual photography time) for some quick, but still nice portraits.

In the right location, a quick portrait session can still get you very nice shots, but you will have far less variety of shots ... good photos take time, great photos can take longer. If you have a bridal party and would like them in some shots we would suggest an additional 15 minutes.