Destination wedding

At a destination wedding the guests who flew in are present for two or three days, and the welcome party or rehearsal dinner is often the only time everyone is in one place and genuinely relaxed. Ten hours split across that evening and the wedding day produces a better record than ten consecutive hours on the day itself, and it is the single recommendation couples take up most often once it is put to them. The coverage is the same; where it is spent is the decision.

On flying a photographer in: it is rarely cheaper once flights, two or three nights of accommodation and a travel day either side are counted, and a photographer who has never seen the venue spends your ceremony hour finding out where the light goes. Booking someone already there puts that money into coverage instead, and into somebody who knows which room is usable at four o’clock and which beach needs a permit.

The logistics that go wrong at a destination wedding are almost never photographic. A ceremony scheduled for the hour the sun is directly overhead because the venue offered that slot. A beach permit that caps the guest list below the number already invited. A sunrise location that needs a reservation nobody knew existed. Those are settled in the planning rather than on the day, and the venue liaison is part of this booking for that reason.

Seven hundred or more retouched photographs within six weeks, a second photographer throughout, and coverage that can be split across two days at no extra cost. From $4,800. For two people and no guests the elopement service is the honest recommendation and it is less than half the price — this one exists for the wedding that brought forty people to an island.