How Many Hours of Coverage Do You Actually Need?
Work backwards from the last thing you want photographed, not forwards from the first.
Couples usually pick a number of hours and then try to fit the day inside it. That is backwards, and it is why so many galleries stop before the best part of the evening.
Start at the end instead.
Decide the last photograph
Is it the first dance? The send-off? The moment the two families finally sit down together and eat? Name it. Then count backwards to the first thing you want — usually hair and makeup — and you have your number. It is almost always larger than the one you had in mind.
A rough guide
Six hours
A single event. A nikkah with a meal afterwards, or a reception on its own. Tight, but it works when the day is genuinely one block.
Eight hours
Getting ready through to the start of the evening. This is the most common booking, and it covers most single-venue weddings comfortably.
Ten to twelve hours
Two events, two venues, or a day that starts with hair at nine and finishes with a send-off. If your nikkah and walima share a date, you are here.
Two days
Mehndi or holud on one day, the wedding on the next. These are two separate bookings, not a long one.
The hour people forget
Travel. Moving three hundred guests from a prayer hall to a banquet hall twenty minutes away is never twenty minutes. If your day has a move in it, add an hour and stop worrying about it.
Can you add hours on the day?
With us, yes — we would far rather stay than leave halfway through something. But it is charged at the hourly rate rather than the package rate, so if you already suspect you will run long, it is cheaper to book it properly at the start.
Nobody has ever told us they wished they had booked fewer hours.