How Many Hours of Wedding Photography Do You Need in Las Vegas?

How many hours of wedding photography you need in Las Vegas depends on which of three kinds of day you’re having. A short ceremony day, where you get married, take portraits, and then go off on your own, needs 2 to 4 hours. A ceremony with a dinner or a party afterward needs 5 to 7 hours. A traditional full day, from getting ready all the way through the end of the reception, needs 8 to 10 hours. I’m McKenzie. I grew up in Las Vegas and I still live here, I’ve photographed weddings every year since 2010, and I’ve shot more than 300 of them at all three of those sizes.

You’ve probably read somewhere that eight hours is standard. That advice was written for the third kind of day, and plenty of Las Vegas weddings aren’t that kind of day at all. So the first thing to settle is which kind of day you’re planning. Once you know that, the number of hours is easy to work out.

The Three Kinds of Las Vegas Wedding Day

Almost every wedding I photograph here is one of three kinds of day, and each one needs a different number of hours. Find yours in this table first, then adjust from there.

The day	What it includes	Who it fits	Hours to book
Short ceremony day	Details before you’re dressed, the ceremony, photos with whoever came, and portraits of the two of you	Couples getting married at a chapel, a small venue, or outdoors, with dinner afterward that they don’t need photographed	2 to 4 hours
Ceremony plus dinner or party	Some getting ready photos, a first look, the ceremony, family and wedding party photos, portraits, then dinner, toasts, and a first dance	Couples having a real celebration with guests, but not a full day that runs from hair and makeup to midnight	5 to 7 hours
Traditional full day	Getting ready, details, first look, ceremony, family and wedding party photos, portraits, and the whole reception through the exit	Couples doing the full wedding day at a venue, usually with a wedding party and a guest list	8 to 10 hours

What Each Hour of Coverage Actually Buys

Hours are easier to pick once you can see what fills them. Here’s a wedding day in order, with what each piece takes and what falls off the end when you cut an hour.

Getting ready and details

Getting ready coverage costs you an hour at the front of the day, because I have to start an hour earlier than I otherwise would. What that hour buys is your dress on a hanger, your rings, your invitation suite, your mom zipping you up, your partner getting their tie on. On a short ceremony day you can do it in half an hour, which covers the details and the last few minutes before you’re dressed. This is the first part couples cut when they’re trimming hours. It’s also the part I hear about later, when they wish they’d kept it.

Getting from one place to another

Getting ready at your hotel and getting married somewhere else is an ordinary Las Vegas wedding, and that drive comes out of your hours. Count it both ways if you’re coming back afterward.

Count the loading and unloading too, because that usually takes longer than the driving does. Ten people getting into cars is never quick. And if you’re going from a hotel on the Strip to a venue off the Strip on a Friday afternoon, give it more time than your phone’s map says.

So if your day has two locations, add up the driving and the loading and see whether the number you already picked has room for it. A lot of the time it does.

The ceremony

A ceremony runs about 30 minutes, according to WeddingWire. Yours will run longer if you have readings, a religious service, or cultural traditions built in, so use your own number instead of the average. The ceremony can’t be moved, shortened, or done over, so it sits inside your coverage window no matter how few hours you book.

Family and wedding party photos

Family formals take 45 minutes to an hour. Each grouping takes three to five minutes to gather, arrange, and shoot, and WeddingWire’s photography timeline suggests keeping the list to about 15 groupings at most. So the way to make this part shorter is to make the list shorter, and that’s a real place to find an hour if you’re looking for one. Send me your list ahead of time and I’ll run it, so nobody wanders off to the bar in the middle. You don’t have to be the one rounding up your uncles on your wedding day.

Portraits of the two of you

Give this 45 minutes, and put it where the light is good rather than where it’s convenient. The best outdoor light of the day runs from about 45 minutes before sunset until a few minutes after it. That’s golden hour, and it’s worth building the rest of your timeline around it. When couples run out of hours, this is what gets squeezed, and I’d protect it if you can, because these are the photos people end up hanging on a wall. If you want more portraits of just the two of you than one wedding day has room for, that’s what an engagement session is for.

The entrance, dinner, and toasts

Cocktail hour runs 60 to 90 minutes, and then the reception starts. The parts you planned all happen early: your entrance, dinner, and the toasts. A whole reception runs about five hours, roughly one hour of cocktails and four hours of dinner and dancing, per The Knot. Add a 30 minute ceremony, 45 minutes of family photos, 45 minutes of portraits, and an hour of getting ready to that, and you’re at eight hours before anybody drives anywhere. That’s why an eight hour day gets tight when you want prep coverage too.

The dancing and the exit

At the weddings I photograph, the first dance almost always happens in the first hour of the reception, so it’s already inside most coverage windows. The open dancing after it isn’t. Every hour you cut off the end of the night is an hour of dance floor photos you don’t get.

Then there’s the exit, with the sparklers or the bubbles and everybody lined up outside cheering as you go. It’s the last thing on the schedule, so it’s the first thing you lose when coverage ends before the reception does. If that’s the part you care about most, protect that hour.

How a First Look Changes the Number of Hours

A first look lets you do your couple portraits, your wedding party photos, and often your family photos before the ceremony instead of after it. That usually saves an hour on the back half of the day, because you’re not asking your guests to wait through a photo session, and it often lets you book one hour less overall. It also means you see each other earlier in the day, which is a personal decision as much as a scheduling one, so I wrote a whole article about whether a first look is right for your Las Vegas wedding.

Las Vegas Heat and Light Decide When Your Coverage Starts

Two local things decide when your coverage should start and stop. One is how hot the afternoon gets. The other is how early or late the sun goes down.

The heat surprises people who are planning from out of town. Normal high temperatures in Las Vegas run 99°F in June, 104°F in July, and 103°F in August, according to the National Weather Service. A 2 PM outdoor ceremony in July is hard on everybody. You’re in a dress, your grandmother is sitting in the third row, and it’s over 100 degrees. Summer weddings here work much better in the evening, and that pushes your whole coverage window later. If you’re marrying in the summer, my guide to a summer wedding in Las Vegas goes deeper on how to plan around the heat.

The light is the other half. In late June, sunset in Las Vegas falls at 8:01 PM, the latest it gets all year. In mid April it’s around 7:05 PM. In early December it’s 4:27 PM, the earliest sunset of the year. That’s a three and a half hour swing between a June wedding and a December one, and it changes everything about your timeline. A 4 PM ceremony in June leaves four full hours of daylight afterward. The same 4 PM ceremony in December is over right as the sun sets, which means your portraits have to happen before the ceremony or they happen in the dark. If you’re still choosing your date, that’s one of the things I go through in my guide to the best time of year to get married in Las Vegas.

So the local rule is simple. In summer, start late and end late. In winter, start early and finish before dark. You might book the same number of hours either way. They just sit at a different time of day.

Sample Las Vegas Wedding Timelines

Here’s what each of the three days looks like on a clock. These are examples, not rules, and yours will move around based on your venue and your ceremony.

A short ceremony day, 3 hours, mid April with sunset at 7:05 PM

• 4:45 PM: Coverage starts. Details, the rings, and the last few minutes before you’re dressed.
• 5:30 PM: Ceremony, about 30 minutes.
• 6:00 PM: Photos with family and everyone who came.
• 6:30 PM: Portraits of the two of you around the venue.
• 7:00 PM: Golden hour portraits through sunset.
• 7:45 PM: Coverage ends.

If your short ceremony day is out in the desert with nobody there but the two of you, it runs a little differently. I walk through how those days go on my elopements page.

A ceremony plus dinner day, 6 hours, late June with sunset at 8:01 PM

• 3:30 PM: Coverage starts. Getting ready indoors, details, and the dress.
• 4:45 PM: First look in the shade.
• 5:15 PM: Portraits of the two of you.
• 5:45 PM: Wedding party photos.
• 6:15 PM: Everybody cools off inside while guests arrive.
• 6:30 PM: Ceremony, once the worst of the heat has passed.
• 7:05 PM: Family photos.
• 7:20 PM: A few more portraits of the two of you as the light gets good.
• 8:15 PM: Dinner and toasts.
• 9:00 PM: First dance.
• 9:30 PM: Coverage ends.

A traditional full day, 9 hours, mid April with sunset at 7:05 PM

• 12:30 PM: Coverage starts. Getting ready, details, and the dress.
• 2:00 PM: First look, then portraits of the two of you and the wedding party.
• 3:15 PM: You disappear while guests arrive.
• 4:00 PM: Ceremony.
• 4:35 PM: Family photos while cocktail hour runs.
• 5:30 PM: Reception entrance, dinner, and toasts.
• 6:30 PM: The two of you slip out for golden hour portraits.
• 7:15 PM: First dance, then open dancing.
• 9:15 PM: Staged exit with sparklers.
• 9:30 PM: Coverage ends.

How Much Getting Ready Coverage Is Worth Paying For?

An hour of prep coverage is worth it and two usually aren’t. The photos you want from that part of the morning are the ones from the last stretch before you’re dressed: the dress hanging in the window, your rings, your bouquet, your mom or your best friend helping you into it, the moment right before you walk out. That’s about an hour’s worth. The two hours before it are hair and makeup, and hair and makeup looks about the same in minute five as it does in minute ninety. If your budget is deciding between a second prep hour and an extra hour at the reception, take the reception hour.

Does Coverage Have to Run Until the End of the Reception?

No, and this is where couples buy back an hour. Book coverage through the parts of the reception that only happen once, which are the entrance, the toasts, the first dance, the parent dances, and the cake if you’re doing one. After that it’s open dancing, and in my experience 40 minutes of open dancing photographs about the same as two hours of it.

If the send off matters to you, you don’t have to stay until midnight to get it. Gather your people 30 or 45 minutes before your coverage ends, hand out the sparklers or the bubbles, and do the exit then.

Everyone goes back inside afterward and the party keeps going without me. Those photos look like a real exit because they are one, and doing it early saves you an hour or two of coverage.

What Does an Extra Hour of Wedding Photography Cost?

My rate is $300 per hour when you book two or more hours. Prices are subject to change, and everything I charge is on my pricing page, so you can see it before you ever email me.

Here’s how I’d decide when you’re stuck between two numbers. Add the hour when it buys a moment that only happens once, like the exit, the toasts, or portraits in good light. Skip the hour when it buys more of something already photographed, like a second hour of hair and makeup or a third hour of the same dance floor. If you want the wider picture on what a wedding photographer costs here, I go through all of it in my guide to how much a wedding photographer costs in Las Vegas.

How to Land on Your Number

Four questions settle it for almost everybody.

• Do you want photos of getting ready? A full hour of it adds an hour to the front of your day. Details and the last few minutes before you’re dressed take about half of that.
• Are you getting ready in one place and getting married in another? Add the drive, plus the time it takes to load up and unload on either end.
• Is there a reception, and do you care about the dancing? No reception means 2 to 4 hours. A dinner and a few dances means 5 to 7. A full reception you want photographed to the end means 8 to 10.
• Are you doing a first look? If yes, you can usually book one hour less, because the portraits and group photos happen before the ceremony instead of after it.

Add those up and you’ll land within an hour of the right number for your day.

If you land between two numbers, look at your own timeline and see what that extra hour would actually cover. And if you can’t tell yet because you don’t have a timeline yet, that’s completely normal. Most of the couples who email me don’t have one either. You don’t have to solve this by yourself before you talk to anybody. Tell me both numbers and I’ll work it out with you from your real day.

Let’s Figure Out Your Timeline Together

If you’re not sure which of these three days is yours, tell me about it and I’ll tell you honestly what I think you need. I’d rather book you for 4 hours that fit your day than 8 that don’t.

Email me at mckenzie@msweddingimage.com with your date, your venue, and a rough idea of how the day goes, or send it through my contact page, and I’ll walk your timeline through with you. I hold dates once your venue and date are confirmed, so as soon as that part is locked in, reach out. You can also look through more full Las Vegas wedding days while you decide.