Maui Wedding Packages - How Much Photography is Enough?

When booking any Maui wedding package it is very important to ask the question 'how much photography is enough for my needs'? It is a question not very many brides ask in the planning stages, when they really should. People often get so wrapped up in booking the wedding, they don't think enough about how many poses they want with their family and friends.

Maui Wedding Packages - Group shot

Since our blog is tailored to suit small weddings and Maui Beach Weddings, usually under 50 people, brides just assume that 1 hour is plenty of photography time for their wedding. Look at the photography example below and see just how much time is used throughout the ceremony, pictures of the bride & groom and family shots.

Total Photography time (included in package): 1 hour

Ceremony: 20 min

Bride and groom shots: 20-30 min.

That leaves you with roughly 10 to 20 minutes for family/wedding party shots. When we shoot the family and group wedding photos it usually takes 4-5 minutes for each pose on average (moving people in and out, catching the children that need to be in the shot that are running half way down the beach, making sure everyone is looking nice and smiling, getting the pose right, then finding all the right people for the next shot and posing them). This estimate may seem high, but it is really just an average, because once you put grandma and grandpa in a few shots, which can sometimes take 7-10 minutes just to get posed and photographed, it is evident why we estimate 4-5 minutes per shot average.

Here is an example of just a few shots:

Bride, Groom, Bride's Immediate family (parents, siblings) -5min

Bride, Groom, Grooms's Immediate family (parents, siblings) -5 min

Bride, Groom, brides's grandma and grandpa -5min

Bride, Groom, Groom's grandma and grandpa -5min

Bride and Maid of honor- 5 min

Groom and Best Man -5 min. 

= 30 min (from above family and friends poses) + Ceremony 20 + Bride and Groom shots 30 min = 1 hour 20 min.

It is important to have realistic expectations of what you are going to get for your money.

If you want shots with family and you have more than 20 people in your group, make a list of all of the groups you want. This will either help you understand that you most likely need to upgrade the amount of photography or will really pair down how many family photos you want.

Maui Beach Wedding - Maluaka Beach

If you take anything away from this post, please remember, you are the 'Super Stars' of your wedding.  You need to be sure to have enough photography time dedicated to just yourselves. If you want lots of family included photos you need additional photography time. In the whole scheme of the entire wedding cost, an extra few hundred bucks to get that extra 1/2 hour of photography you really want is nothing, especially if got the images you dreamed about, on your special day.   

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