Sunset Photos + Wedding Timeline Help!

My advice would be to take separate photos before the ceremony. So photos of you with your bridesmaids and him with his groomsmen and any family photos that don't include both of you so like him with his parents or you with your parents. Then after the ceremony you'd take full bridal parties, any remaining family photos, and photos of you as a couple. Otherwise you could very easily go over time which would push back your entire timeline. This happened at my brother's wedding. The reception started late as a result which meant guests were sitting around waiting for everything to begin. They also didn't get all of their couple photos done even if cocktail hour being extended so their photographer pulled them to the side during the reception to take photos and they missed a good portion of their reception as a result. As for sunset photos, I've always seen the bride and groom sneak outside with their photographer for about 10-15 minutes to take sunset photos. It sounds like you need to figure out what time the ceremony is going to start.

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Yeah I totally agree with you. We'll be getting as many pre-ceremony photos as we can. Thankfully we'll have a second photographer which will help. We definitely want to avoid those situations. We are open to ceremony start times, as long as it's not in the early afternoon. It's just tricky accounting for travel time is all. God forbid there's traffic...it's San Francisco so there probably will be

Ok, just throwing out ideas here, in no particular order. You didn't say what time your ceremony starts. But working backwards from sunset, if you went to an outdoor spot near the cathedral, you could do an hour's worth of photos before losing the light. So your ceremony would have to be done by about 5pm to accomplish that. That puts the ceremony start time at about 4-4:15. That allows a tiny bit of wiggle room.


Also, I wanted to say that there are a lot of photos you can do before the ceremony. You and your bridesmaids, you and immediate family, etc. Your groom can do the same. In whatever separate locations you have worked out. It will save a lot of photo time so you have time for the B&G ones.
Idk if any of that helps. But I wish you luck!! I'm from the SF Bay Area, so I'm excited to hear your reception is at the Fairmont!! Beautiful hotel!! That's going to be amazing! Happy planning!

I think first question is if you're restricted to a certain timeframe for your ceremony. Most religious ceremonies I've been have multiple per day, so you're assigned a time slot - my brother's wedding had to be at noon since that was the only slot left and the cocktail hour probably didn't start until 5pm. A similar thing happened during a friend's wedding - there was a big enough gap of time between the ceremony and reception that we just hit up a bar to kill the time. It's definitely not uncommon to have a longer gap of time between the two, especially if they're at different locations!

View Quoted Comment We haven’t spoken about timeframes with our priest and he didn’t inform us if there were other weddings that same day but that’s a good idea to ask since I didn’t know about that! Makes me feel better too knowing that it’s okay to have a longer gap of time between the events since they’re at different places.

I guess the biggest thing is when is your ceremony? Depending on the time of that ceremony you could take some family portraits at the cathedral then have your bridal party travel to a location near your reception or in between so you can take those bridal party and couple pictures. I would recommend not going to your cocktail party that way you have more time for photos and you can set aside time to go through tables at the reception to talk to your guests. For sunset pictures I would talk to your photographer. I'm planning on having a point where my photographer pulls me and my FH for nighttime/sunset photos for a brief few minutes. This would give us time to breathe just the two of us and get those intimate shots. I have found when it comes to the timing of my day the best people to help map things out have been my photographer and my DJ. My coordinator has been great but is very good at going with what I present. My photographer knows how long things take and is able to map out the day with exactly what I want.