What Time to Have Your Wedding Ceremony

So, you’re in the process of planning your wedding and you’re wondering what time to have your wedding ceremony. There are two perspectives from which to answer this question. The first is from the experience perspective. What makes most sense for the overall flow of the wedding day and enjoyment of your guests? The answer to this question would probably be mid to late afternoon, allowing enough time to enjoy cocktail hour before transitioning into dinner.

The second perspective has to do with lighting conditions for photography. If there weren’t any guests to consider, the ideal time for most photographers would be golden hour. Golden hour is the time just after sunrise or just before sunset. For the purposes of this article, let’s assume that it won’t be convenient to have your ceremony at golden hour. After all, if you’re getting married in the summer, that would likely mean waking up at six o’clock in the morning or, alternatively, having your ceremony at 8:00 or so at night, depending on location.

Indoor Wedding Ceremonies

One obvious option is to simply have your ceremony indoors, which makes renders time of day almost irrelevant. You’ll still have the bright lighting conditions outside, but your photographer will have a lot more control over the light that’s falling onto you, your wedding party and your guests.

Overcast Wedding Ceremonies

Another consideration is how cloudy the location you’re getting married tends to be. If it’s a place that’s usually overcast, this will also make it easier for (most) photographers to shoot during any time of day. The reason for this is that overcast days essentially turn outdoor ceremony sites into giant soft boxes with flat, even lighting that reduces contrast and harsh shadows.

But, in Colorado, where we get 300 days of sun per year, overcast days aren’t something we can typically count on. If you’re planning your wedding ceremony to be outdoors, in the summer, in the middle of the day, in a place that usually gets a lot of sun, this next section is for you.

Angle of Sunlight

When you go to tour your wedding venue, try to do so approximately one calendar year in advance, and try to be there around the time of day you’re planning to have your ceremony. This way, you’ll get a pretty good sense of what the lighting conditions will look like for your wedding ceremony (depending on weather, of course).

Now, take it one step further. Make note of where the sunlight is coming from. Is it coming in from the front, from behind, or from the side? There are no right or wrong answers here. Each type of lighting has its own set of pros and cons.

With that said, we’ve added examples of each below. Take a look and and see if you have a preference for front light, back light, or side light.

Front light

Back light

Side light

Time of Year

Another variable to consider when deciding what time to have your wedding ceremony is time of year. If you’re not getting married in the summer, you very well might be able to have an afternoon ceremony during golden hour. The photo below was taken at a fall wedding in Colorado. It was the early stages of golden hour, but since the sun sets so much earlier in the fall, there was still plenty of time for family photos and cocktail hour before dinner.

Blue Hour Wedding Ceremonies

This wedding ceremony took place even later in the year, which allowed the couple to have a blue hour wedding ceremony. Blue hour, also known as dusk, is the time between sunset and full dark. The bride really liked blue hour photography and specifically wanted to time her wedding around a blue hour ceremony.

Nighttime Wedding Ceremonies

If you have a winter wedding, it will also be super easy to have a nighttime wedding ceremony. The sun sets around 4:00 or so in Colorado in winter, which leaves plenty of time to go from your ceremony, to family photos, to cocktail hour, to dinner, without inconveniencing any of your guests or vendors. And nighttime photography sometimes has a magical quality that can’t be achieved when the sun is up.

What Time to Have Your Wedding Ceremony: Conclusion

So long as you hire a wedding photographer who understands how to handle different lighting conditions, the time of your wedding ceremony doesn’t really matter all that much. At that point, it just comes down to personal preference.

If you don’t hire a photographer who understands how to handle different lighting conditions (although, we think you probably should!), then we would advise aiming for a time and location where the sun will be lower in the sky (i.e. not during summer in the middle of the day.)

Thanks for taking the time to read and, as always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments for us. Happy wedding planning!