Send Off Photos

A lot of people do “send off” photos as they walk down the aisle at the end of their ceremony

A lot of people do what you described and stage an exit for the photo opportunity. I think it's really a personal preference - if you would look back at these photos and feel like they were inauthentic, then I would forgo a staged event. You can still have your sendoff when the time comes and it will be really a fun and special way to end the night (and that moment might mean more vs. knowing you are just going to turn around and go back inside).

Even if it's just supposed to be an early staged send-off, I think there is a risk that some guests will take it as a cue/excuse to leave. We attended a wedding that the couple planned to end at 11 pm, but they wanted to take the sparkler exit photos at 10 to accommodate the photographer. They were super disorganized, which made it worse, but once people started moving outside for the photo we took that opportunity to duck out.... We were not the only ones. I agree with Chrysta that you may want to do an authentic exit photo from the ceremony.

FWIW daughter and SIL did not want a planned exit as they didn't want to miss a second of the reception. After the "last dance" (which turned into a three-song medley because guests weren't quite ready to go...), they had a few minutes to say goodbye to their guests. At the end of the night, they and their photographer were the last ones in the then empty venue, and he got some incredible pictures of the two of them alone at the end of the night. The venue banquet captain told daughter in his 20 years at the venue he'd never seen anything like it and thought it was awesome. I know your photographer will be gone, but perhaps a talented friend would be willing to stay till the end to get those final photos for you.

Good luck!

I’ve seen it at a few weddings & it definitely doesn’t look staged. My niece did that & it came out so good!

We didn’t have like a send off for the end of the night or reception but we kind of had one for the ceremony so an alternative is doing one for the ceremony. And you are absolutely right the photos are really great

We’re having a faux sparkler send off. We have our photographer until 10 pm, so we’ll do the faux exit at nine and party on after that. My photographer said a faux send off was a great way to make sure older guests are still in the photos and can still leave early if they want.

We eliminated a send-off for this exact reason. We weren't about to pay an extra $750 for our photographer to stay for an extra hour and a half just to get send-off photos, and we didn't want to stage it because we figured that guests would take it as a cue to leave. Instead, before the photographer left, she spent a few minutes taking black and white night shots of me and my husband outdoors, just the two of us (nobody noticed that we were gone for 10 minutes). These ended up being our favorite photos from the whole wedding!

We did a "staged" send off. Mostly because we got married a minimum of 1 hour from where a lot of our guests lived, so we wanted to make sure our entire crowd was there for our send off photos. It was actually a lot of fun and our photos turned out great.