Timing Hair & Make-up and Photography Start Time

The best people to ask are your hair and makeup artist and your photographer. They’ll help you come up with a timeline that makes sense for how many getting ready photos you want and the amount of people getting ready.

Depends on the amount of people in your wedding party, how many hair/makeup artists you have, if you're doing a first look, and if you have a grand exit that you want photographed. Your photographer and hair/makeup artists would be able to give you a much better estimate than anyone on here.

I have myself, 5 bridesmaids, and my mom getting ready and we're starting at 10am so that we're dressed for our first look and pictures at 3pm and the ceremony is at 5pm. The photographer will show up around 1pm for 8 hours. We'll do cake cutting and bouquet toss around 8:45pm and she'll leave after that.

Timing will kinda depend on if you and how many others are getting professional hair/makeup services and also if are doing a first look or not. My start time is 4:30pm like you The salon is starting professsional hair/makeup services at 10am for me, my mother, and my fiancé’s mother. We will be out of the salon by 12:40pm and at the venue by 1pm. My photographers know we want to do a first look and get a majority of our newlyweds, family, wedding party photos done before the ceremony. So they will arrive 1pm-1:30pm (3 - 3 1/2 hours before ceremony). It is very important to have hair and makeup ready before your photographer arrives!


10am Professional hair/makeup services start for three people, 12:40 out of the salon, 1pm be back at the venue, 1-1:30pm photographer arrives to get the bulk of all the photos, 4:30 ceremony, they will be there for all the special moments, 8pm open floor dancing starts, 9pm they capture about an 1hr of open floor dancing miscellaneous photos and leave around 9pm = 8 hours! I hope this helps!

Hi!! For the photographer, I suggest working backwards. So if your reception ends at 10pm, the photographer can start at 2:00pm so they capture everything and stay till the end.


I had 2 moms, myself and 5 bridesmaids for hair and 3 for makeup. We started at 9:00am and ended at 12:30pm. Ceremony start time was at 4:00pm. Hope this helps ❤️

I have my photographer and videographer for 8 hours too. Our ceremony starts at 5:45pm. We will be getting ready from 11:00am-4:00pm. (Hair and makeup for 4, hair only for 1). The photographer and videographer are arriving at 3pm. Our reception ends at 11pm. We're doing a first look and wedding party/immediate family pics before the ceremony and leaving only a few extended family pics for after the ceremony.

View Quoted Comment Thanks! Really good breakdown of the day.

View Quoted Comment

This. They do this for a living so the know what schedules work best.

We had the photographer booked for 8 hours as well. You should work out when you want the photographer to stay until... do you want them to capture the dancing? Then subtract 8 hours. Remember that with the getting ready, people often take "touch up" shots at the very end after you've had your makeup and hair done. Like, putting on your accessories or pretending to put on blush. The photographer only needs to be there for the very end or after you have finished having your makeup done. It all goes by so fast, 8 hours sounds like a lot but in reality it goes by quickly and we actually ran out of time for getting ready shots. But anyway just remember what you MUST capture on the day and plan around that. And remember to be flexible on the day!