Ceremony Times?

[Winslet]

I''ve been stressing over this problem for some time now - maybe you guys can help me work it out! My fiance and I are getting married on Fri, Sept. 25th. We have our church and venue tentatively booked for a 5:00pm ceremony and a 7:00pm reception. However, we are concerned about daylight since the sun will be setting at 6:47pm that evening. I really wanted to talk with our photographer about how this will affect our pictures, but he hasn''t called me back since my first message to him about a month ago. We do have room to move our times to as early as 4:00pm and 6:00pm, but I am worried about the local guests not getting out of work early enough to make it to the ceremony. We really need to decide on our times soon because it''s time to send out the save-the-dates, and the one that my FI has his heart set on would look silly without a time on it. Any suggestions?

 

[cammy85]

I think if you have a good photographer, they should be able to take good photoigraphs regardless of the light. I''m getting married at 5:30 and our reception is at 7 (with about 15-20 min driving between the two places). I don''t know if it helps too much, but if your ceremony is going to be 30- 1 hour, you should have pretty decent lighting. My photographer loves the lighting before the sun goes down. It''s not as harsh as the midday sun. Just my experience.

Sorry if it wasn''t super helpful

 

[elrohwen]

Hey, we're date twins! Whoo! Haha

I think it really depends how long your ceremony will be. Some ceremonies are as short as 20 min, so you'd still have lots of daylight. If you're doing a full Catholic mass, for example, it could be 45min to 1 hour and you should probably move it earlier. If you're still worried about lack of daylight, just move it earlier. No harm in that! I think most people will already have to leave work early to get there for a 5pm ceremony (they have to go home and change and everything) so leaving an hour earlier shouldn't be a problem.

ETA: I agree with Cammy that the lighting just before sunset is perfect. I completely forgot about it, but it's called the "magic hour" or something by fashion photographers because the lighting is so flattering.

 

[Winslet]

Thanks cammy, I really appreciate the comment about the sunset lighting for the photographer - it makes me feel a lot better about having an evening wedding, no matter what time I finally decide to settle for.

Elrohwen, I was just reading another of your posts and discovered that we are also both getting married on the Hudson River! How cool is that? I''m not Catholic, but my ceremony will probably go for about 45 minutes, and there is about a 30 minute drive to the reception (I had no idea it was so far until I mapquested it just now) so I''m probably going to end up having to make some changes after all. Where on the Hudson are you having your wedding?