A wedding videography timeline, hour by hour

Eight hours of coverage covers a normal wedding day from getting ready through the first two dances. Where those eight hours start decides what your film contains. Here is a timeline that works for a 4:30pm ceremony, and the reasoning behind each block.

A working eight-hour timeline

• 1:00pm, we arrive. Details first: dress, rings, invitation, shoes. Ten minutes, done quietly while everyone is still in robes.
• 1:30pm, getting ready. The last of hair and makeup, and the conversation that comes with it. We want window light, not overhead light.
• 2:30pm, dressing and letters. If you are exchanging letters or gifts, do it here. This is where most of the emotional audio in your film comes from.
• 3:15pm, first look, if you are having one. Twenty minutes, somewhere shaded and private.
• 3:45pm, wedding party and family portraits. The photographer leads. We work the edges.
• 4:30pm, ceremony. Microphones set thirty minutes before. Two cameras, one on each of your faces.
• 5:15pm, cocktail hour. Guest reactions, details, and the room before anyone touches it.
• 6:00pm, couple portraits, golden hour. Ten to twenty minutes. Non-negotiable if you want the frames people share.
• 6:45pm, dinner and toasts. Recorders on before the first glass is tapped.
• 8:00pm, first dances, then the floor opens.
• 9:00pm, we wrap. The dance floor at the end of the night is usually how the film closes.

That timeline assumes one location. Add twenty minutes for every move between spaces, and thirty if guests have to move with you. Transitions are where timelines fail, not ceremonies.

Where films get won

Details before the room fills. Ten quiet minutes at the start buys you a beginning for the film. Once eight people are in the room it is gone.

Letters and gifts. If you want your own voices in the film beyond the vows, this is where they come from. Put it on the timeline or it will not happen.

Golden hour. Ten minutes in real low sun is worth more than an hour in flat light. Ask your planner to protect it, and eat later.

The reception before dinner. Nobody sees the room the way you designed it once dinner starts. We need five minutes alone in it.

Toasts, early enough to hear. Speeches after two hours of open bar are harder to use, not because of the speaker but because of the room. If the toasts matter to you, put them right after the first course.

The two blocks people cut first

Cocktail hour and the reception details are the first things squeezed when a timeline runs long, and they are the two blocks that give a film its texture. Cocktail hour is where guests are relaxed, mid-conversation, and unaware of us, which is the only footage of your friends that looks like your friends. The room, before dinner, is the only record of what you spent nine months designing.

If something has to go, cut ten minutes from family photos instead. Groupings run faster than anyone plans for when someone holds the list.

If your ceremony is at 6pm or later

In summer that is fine. In November it means the ceremony ends in the dark. Two options: do a first look and take portraits at 4:30 before the ceremony, or accept that your outdoor portraits will be lit rather than natural. Both work; the first one looks better.

What we need from you, and when

Thirty minutes of access to the ceremony space before guests arrive, to place microphones and test them. Five minutes alone in the reception room. A shot list of the family groupings you actually want, sent a week out. And one person who is not you, whose phone we can call if something changes on the day.

That last one is worth more than it sounds. On a wedding day, the couple is the least reachable pair of people at the wedding, which is exactly as it should be.

Should we add hours?

Add an hour at the front if you want the whole getting-ready story, or at the back if you are planning a sparkler exit or a late-night second look. Ours is $250 an hour. Most couples who add one add it to the end.

Send us the timeline

Two weeks out, send the planner's timeline. We will flag anything that will cost you footage, like a golden hour that collides with dinner or a ceremony with no early access for microphones, while there is still time to move it.

Common questions