Wedding Portraits After the Wedding Ceremony But Before the Wedding Reception
If you’ve kept up with our blog, you’ve probably found that we wedding photographers can be a great resource for good wedding ideas and can help filter out the bad wedding ideas. And, let me tell you, that advice comes in handy when it comes to those portraits taken after the wedding ceremony has been completed but before the wedding reception has begun.
How Long Should These Wedding Portraits Take?
On the one hand, you don’t want to keep your guests waiting too long between the wedding ceremony and the wedding reception, but on the other hand, it’s important to get perfect portraits of the bride and groom and their families. We’ve heard stories of these wedding portraits taking 90 minutes or more with some wedding photographers. Taking that long means that many of the wedding guests may be stuffed with hors d’oeuvres by the time the bride and groom have reach the reception.
Bill and I are full-time professional wedding photographers. That means we do excellent work in a reasonable time. When taking wedding portraits right after the wedding ceremony, we generally shoot for 40 minutes to 50 minutes, and never shoot for more than an hour tops. This way we are able to help pose people and set up our professional lighting equipment, enabling us to take beautiful portraits of the bride’s side of the family and the groom’s side of the family as well as the bride and groom together.
How Many Wedding Portraits Should Be Taken?
We had one bride in the past who wanted us to shoot 90 portraits (yes, 90!) between the ceremony and reception. She wanted individual portraits with aunts, uncles, numerous extended family members, and certain guests. We stressed to her that taking that many wedding portraits meant we would have to skimp on the quality of the portraits or that we would have to take hours shooting all of those portraits.
What we recommend is focusing on the immediate and important family members (mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents), and then the bridesmaids and groomsmen as groups. We’ll work off a list of portraits with the bride and groom and make sure we get those portraits completed and looking great.
You may wonder “What about photos with members of the extended family or friends?” Bill and I think it’s best to take those sorts of photos during the wedding reception. It’s also a big reason we do wedding photo booth slide shows.
I hope that wedding advice was helpful. More wedding advice to come. For now, take a look at our wedding photography gallery to learn why we’ve developed a good reputation for quality wedding photography in the Denver and Northern Colorado area.
