Two of the six wedding packages sit under $1,000. One hour is $698. Three hours is $980. Both are photographed by the same photographer, and delivered the same way, as the twelve-hour package at the top of the range.
What changes is how much of your day exists afterwards.
That is the part a price alone never tells you, so this piece does it properly: what an hour genuinely contains, what three hours reaches, which weddings these two packages suit, and the point at which we would rather you spent more.
The two packages under the line
| Package | Coverage | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Whispers of love | 1 hour | $698 |
| Heartfelt moments | 3 hours | $980 |
Both include a wedding consultation by phone, professionally edited digital images and an online gallery. Photographs arrive within four weeks in full resolution, on USB, and are never watermarked. You choose which images go into the photo book. One photographer, on every package at every price. All six packages are listed on the pricing page.
Nothing is stripped out of the short bookings to make them cheap. The editing is included at $698 exactly as it is at $2,300, and the files arrive at full resolution without a watermark on them. The only thing you are buying less of is time.
What one hour buys
Sixty minutes of coverage is not sixty minutes of photographs. A realistic hour looks close to this:
- Five minutes. Arrive, find the ceremony spot, work out where the sun is and where the guests will end up standing.
- Twenty to thirty minutes. The ceremony.
- Five minutes. The signing, the paperwork, the first round of hugs.
- Ten to fifteen minutes. Family groups, if the list is short and somebody is calling names.
- Ten minutes. The two of you, within walking distance of where you have just been married.
Add those up and there is nothing spare. That is the honest shape of it.
So the hour has one hard requirement: everything happens at one address. A ten-minute drive to a better backdrop is a sixth of your coverage spent in a car, and it comes out of the family groups, because the ceremony is not negotiable and the portraits are what you will hang up.
An hour does not include getting ready, arrivals, the reception room before guests walk in, the speeches or the dancing. If any of those matter to you, the hour is the wrong booking and no amount of running will make it the right one.
What three hours reaches
Three hours is a different animal. It is the first package with slack in it.
You get the last of the preparation or the guests arriving, the ceremony without watching the clock, a full family group list rather than an abbreviated one, and a proper portrait session instead of ten rushed minutes. There is also enough room to move once, so a stretch of parkland or riverfront a few minutes from the ceremony becomes possible rather than reckless.
What three hours does not reach is the meal. Coverage stops before guests sit down, which means no speeches, no cake, no first dance. Plenty of couples choose exactly that on purpose: they want the ceremony and the portraits documented, and they are content for the reception to live on their guests' phones.
If that sentence describes you, $980 is not a compromise. It is the correct product.
The weddings these two packages genuinely suit
A registry ceremony. Short, fixed, at one address, with a small group. This is the booking the one-hour package was built for.
An elopement. Two people, a celebrant, two witnesses and somewhere good to stand. An hour covers it, and three hours covers it with a portrait session that feels unhurried.
A small backyard wedding. Everything at one house means no travel, which is what makes the arithmetic work. Three hours takes you from the guests arriving through to the toasts in the garden before dinner.
Ceremony and portraits only. A larger reception is happening, and you have decided not to pay for it to be photographed. It is a perfectly sound way to spend the budget, even though almost no wedding marketing presents it as an option.
A legal ceremony ahead of a celebration somewhere else. The paperwork happens here with immediate family and the party happens overseas or interstate later. An hour is usually right.
A second wedding, smaller by choice. Fewer people, less structure, and no interest in a twelve-hour production.
When we would tell you to spend more
Some days will not fit inside three hours, and saying so before you book is cheaper for everyone than saying so afterwards.
Book longer coverage if any of these are true:
- Your ceremony and reception are at different addresses. Every move between locations costs twenty to thirty minutes of coverage you have already paid for. Two venues eats a three-hour booking alive.
- You want the speeches. They are often the most emotional part of the night, and they happen well after a short booking has finished.
- You want getting ready. Preparation runs long and starts earlier than anyone plans. It is its own hour, minimum.
- The family group list is long. Blended families, both sides travelling in, or several generations present. Groups take far more time to assemble than to photograph.
- There are two ceremonies. A cultural ceremony in the morning and a Western one in the afternoon is a full day by definition.
- Your bridal party is large. A big group takes far longer to move, position and photograph than a small one, and it takes that time out of the middle of your booking.
The next step up is Timeless union: six hours at $1,498. That is the first package that runs from the end of the getting-ready through the ceremony, the family groups, the portraits and into the reception far enough to hold the speeches. If two or more of the points above apply to your day, that is the booking to make.
The full per-hour arithmetic across all six packages, and why the first hour costs more than any of the ones after it, is set out in what a wedding photographer costs in Brisbane.
How to make one hour work properly
If you have decided on the short booking, four things decide whether it lands.
Put everything at one address. Ceremony, groups and portraits within a two-minute walk. Choose the venue for that, not for the drive-to backdrop.
Write the family group list before the day, and keep it to six groupings. Send it through in advance. Six is roughly the most that fits inside fifteen minutes without anyone being chased across a lawn. On a short booking the groups are the one part of the day worth directing, and the reasoning behind that is in documentary vs traditional wedding photography.
Nominate a caller. One person from each side who knows everybody, is not in the wedding party, and is happy to shout. This single decision saves more time than anything else on the list.
Start the hour at the right time of day. In midsummer a two o'clock ceremony puts you in the hardest light of the year. Book the coverage so the portraits land in the last part of the afternoon rather than the middle of it. The month-by-month sunset table gives you the figure for your date.
What happens once you book
A 50% deposit holds the date and the balance is due one week before the wedding. Before the day there is a consultation by phone, which is where the running order gets checked against the hours you have actually booked. That call is the point at which we will tell you if the timeline does not fit, while there is still time to move something.
We photograph weddings across Brisbane, Ipswich, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. More about how a wedding day runs is on the weddings page, and if you send the date, the venue and the ceremony time through the contact form we will tell you which of the six packages your day actually needs.
Quite often that answer is $698, and we will say so.
