Almost every couple asks me this, and almost every couple apologises first. Half day vs full day wedding photography is a budget question wearing a logistics costume, and there’s nothing embarrassing about it: half day is £1,100, full day is £1,500, the same two prices for photography and for film. Here’s how I’d work out which one your day actually needs, even if you end up booking someone else.
What £1,100 and £1,500 actually buy
Neither tier is sold by the hour. That’s deliberate. Most photographers will quote you six hours or ten hours and leave you to work out what fits inside them, which is fine if you already have a running order and useless if you don’t. Mine are described by the moments they cover, so you can hold them against your own day rather than against a stopwatch.
The half day at £1,100 covers your ceremony, your speeches and a private online gallery. Full day at £1,500 starts earlier, at morning preparation, and runs through to the first dance. Same gallery, same planning call. How I photograph a wedding doesn’t change between the two tiers.
Film runs on exactly the same two numbers. A half day of film is £1,100, covers the ceremony and speeches, and still gives you the teaser, the 5–6 minute highlight film and the full wedding video. Full day of film at £1,500 adds the morning and the first dance. If you want to see how a highlight film is cut before you decide anything, there are recent ones on the films page.
One thing catches people out. That £1,500 buys a full day of one of them, photo or film, not both. Photo and film together is its own package at £2,900, and I mention it this early because couples sometimes build a budget around £1,500 expecting the pair.
Half day vs full day wedding photography starts with your running order
Write down the times you already know. For most couples reading this, that’s one line: ceremony at one o’clock. It’s enough to start with.
Half an hour for a civil ceremony. Twenty minutes outside afterwards for confetti and the first round of hugs, assuming the weather behaves. If your venue calls guests to sit at half three, that’s an hour and a half of drinks reception in between, and somebody needs to be photographing it. Three courses in a room full of people talking will take ninety minutes at the very least. So speeches after the meal begin somewhere near half five, four and a half hours after you walked in.
Then add the overrun. Three speakers at eight minutes each is twenty-four minutes on paper. In the room it becomes the toasts, the wait while somebody finds the microphone, the ad-lib that gets a laugh and buys itself another two minutes. My rule of thumb is to take whatever the running order gives the speeches and add half again.
That gap between ceremony and speeches is the number worth knowing, and it belongs in your first email to any photographer, me included. A half day is described by its two ends. On the schedule above, those ends sit four and a half hours apart, which is a completely different shape of day from a register office ceremony at eleven with speeches over lunch. Ask how the gap is handled before you compare anybody’s prices.
Where the light falls on your date
Nobody makes this argument for you, and on a North East wedding it decides more than the packages do.
Get married in Sunderland on a Saturday in late June and the sun doesn’t set until about a quarter to ten. The low, warm, sideways light people have in mind for their couple portraits doesn’t arrive until roughly a quarter to nine. That’s a long way past the speeches. On a summer date, a half day won’t reach it.
December is the mirror image. A mid-December wedding in the same city loses the sun at about twenty to four, and the best light of the whole day sits around half two, which for a lot of couples lands squarely in the drinks reception. Winter couples underrate that badly. The other side of it is that everything after four is lit by the venue, and no package changes that.
Mid-October falls between the two: sunset just after six, good light from about quarter past five. Then the clocks go back. Dark by half five. Between mid-September and mid-November, sunset here moves by more than three hours, and a full hour of that is the clock change on its own. Look up sunset for your actual date before you commit to anything.
Picture two weddings at Halton Grove, both booked on the half day at £1,100. The June pair finish their speeches by six, and the best light of the day turns up nearly three hours later. The December pair have their portraits taken at half two, in light I’d happily drive across County Durham for. Same package, different date, entirely different day.
A half day is genuinely enough if
I’d rather say this plainly than have you spend £400 you didn’t need to. There are whole categories of wedding where the extra four hundred buys photographs of things you were never going to look at twice.
Your ceremony and your meal are in the same building. No travel, no dead time, nothing lost to a car park. At a single-site venue like Walworth Castle near Darlington, where the rooms and the grounds sit together, a half day gets a great deal more done than the same money at a two-venue wedding.
Your speeches sit before the meal rather than after it. If you can move them, this is the single change that does most for a half day. Speeches at two instead of half five pulls the whole shape of the day forward, and the parts you care about land in daylight.
The morning isn’t precious to you. Some couples want the dress on the wardrobe door and their mum’s face in the mirror. Others would rather get ready in peace, without a camera in the room while they’re half dressed. Both answers are ordinary, and only one of them costs £400 more.
There’s no evening do, or the evening is the same forty people. Nobody new walks in at seven, so there are no arrivals to miss. And with no first dance, there’s no dance floor moment for a full day to reach. A smaller day, deliberately. It photographs beautifully.
Your budget stops at £1,100 and you’d rather have the middle of the day done properly. That’s a legitimate answer. I’d take it over a stretched full day every time, because a ceremony and speeches photographed well is a real set of pictures rather than a compromise. Nobody opens a gallery and thinks about the hour that isn’t in it.
Where a half day starts to cost you something
The first dance. It’s on the full-day list and it isn’t on the half-day one, and that’s the cleanest line between the two. If you can already see that photograph in your head, you have your answer. If you’re having a first dance mainly because it’s expected, you might honestly not mind.
Morning preparation. Full day starts here, and it’s where the quiet frames come from: the letter, the shoes, the room before anyone else is in it. It’s the part I’d miss most, for whatever that’s worth to you.
A day in two places. A ceremony at Sunderland City Hall followed by pictures down at Roker is one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon in this city, and it drops fifteen minutes of driving into the middle of your coverage, twice over if you come back for the meal. Travel within the North East is included in my prices, so this isn’t about money. It’s about the half hour that goes to a car instead of a camera.
Speeches at the end of a long meal. Go back to the arithmetic. If the speeches land at half five and the band starts at eight, you’ve paid for the ceremony, the speeches and everything in between, and the rest of the night belongs to you with no camera in it. That’s a good outcome if you meant it, and a shame if you didn’t see it coming.
FAQs
What’s the actual difference between half day vs full day wedding photography?
Half day at £1,100 covers your ceremony, your speeches and a private online gallery. Full day at £1,500 starts at morning preparation and runs through to the first dance. Same photographer, same style, same gallery.
Can I book a half day of photography and a full day of film?
Yes. The two are priced separately at £1,100 and £1,500 each, so mixing and matching is a normal request rather than an awkward one. Couples do it all the time. Photo and film together across a full day is its own package at £2,900.
Do I still get a private online gallery on a half day?
Every couple does, on every tier, and every package includes a planning call beforehand. Your full gallery is usually with you within eight weeks. Travel, turnaround and the rest of the practical questions live on the FAQ page.
Is a half day enough for a winter wedding?
More often than for a summer one, yes. A December ceremony at one o’clock puts your best light near half two and your speeches well before dark, so the parts of the day that photograph best are already inside the half day. June works the other way round entirely.
When should I decide which tier I need?
Once your venue has handed you a running order. Not before that. If you’re stuck between the two, send me the rough shape of your day and I’ll tell you which one covers it. I’d rather you booked the right tier than the bigger one.
Have a look at the pricing page: photo, film, or both, with what’s included in each.
