Photographer at ceremony or reception?

I would much rather have my photographer there for my wedding than a party.

I'd do the wedding ceremony, personally. We had to postpone our wedding until things reopen here. Now we're just going to go to the courthouse once we can and after that go take pictures in the park. But I'm planning to wear my dress and get hair/make up done that day too, since those pictures and that day matter more to me

We are going to host a celebration of our marriage dinner, instead of a reception, sometime after all this has calmed down. Since I don't know when that'll be I'm planning to bring the wedding album there and our guests can look at all the pictures then if they haven't already seen them

I would choose the ceremony. We are having ours for both, since we only need her for an hour or so for the ceremony so we arent spending too much more. But I understand your situation is different since yours is flying in.

I personally wouldn't skip a photographer for either of these, so if you have it in your budget, I'd recommend getting a second photographer for one of those events. The day you get married is going to be one of the most special days of your lives, so I can't imagine not having professional photos of your partner seeing you for the first time, you exchanging vows, etc. However, if you are having a super small ceremony chances are is it going to be fairly brief compared to your actual wedding and reception later. For us on the day we get married our vows will probably take 10-15 minutes and we'll have maybe 5-6 people total, all socially distanced, so there aren't going to be a whole lot of unique or different photo ops for our ceremony, and with all the photos and stuff we are talking about 1-2 hours of time max. When we can actually have our wedding and reception that we planned, the event will go all day, we'll have our bridesmaids and groomsmen, our families, time to get ready with our loved ones, our first dance, and all of the other things we spent money on - the flowers and decor, food, etc - so we don't want to miss capturing any of that. Plus I imagine I'll cry and smile a lot both times!

So many photographers are now beginning to offer micro-sessions and elopement packages, so in your shoes I'd see if I could find someone local that could do our ceremony (providing I found someone whose work I liked) and then have the other photographer fly out for the big party event, because if you are spending that much money you want them for more than just an hour or two.

Currently our state is under stay-at-home orders and photography isn't considered an essential business so our photographer cannot shoot our wedding on our original date. However our state is gradually opening up and other photographers have successfully petitioned the governors in neighboring states to allow them to shoot elopements, so I'm hoping my photographer can do the same. If not we have a couple of photographer friends who both shoot semi-professionally and have second shot weddings before, and we will ask one of them to photograph our ceremony for us. I'd prefer our wedding photographer, since this is her area of expertise and she has a lot more experience posing couples and getting them comfy being photographed, plus we never did an engagement session so this would be a good opportunity for us to work with her before the big party day, but I know that we will still get some amazing shots if we have to resort to using my friend.

If I had to choose, I would definitely have them there for the ceremony.

We may end up doing this. If we do, I'm hoping to have our photographer come for an hour or so for the ceremony and then the normal amount of time for the reception, but she doesn't really have to travel. I get why other people think having a photographer for the ceremony is more important; the ceremony is the most important part of a wedding. But if I had to choose, I would choose to have a photographer for the reception.


The point of having pictures is that they're a way to help you remember things. You can have a family member/friend/your officiant take a few pictures of you during/after the ceremony to commemorate that moment, but you definitely won't forget it, and it might be bittersweet to look at those pictures knowing that everyone you wanted to be with you on that day, couldn't be. I would personally rather have pictures of all the people we care about enough to invite to the wedding than have more pictures of just the two of us.

I would definitely say ceremony. You can always encourage guests to take their own photos at your reception. There’s only so many photos you want of people dancing anyway lol. When I look through our photos I usually skip through most of those