wedding day pictures

hi ladies
sorry to crash - but i am trying to figure out what to do the day of the wedding regarding photos and i figure only ladies that have been married can give me a good/realistic answer (and when i posted on BHB last week i didnt get any helpful replies)...

My RH only allows us in 2.5 hours prior to ceremony start time (our ceremony starts at 6:30pm so we would get in at 4pm). We have to have time to do the ketubah signing within that 2.5 hours.
Is that enough time to get all pictures done? We are having a bridal party of 13 people (including us) and we have our families (my parents are divorced - dad remarried so its extra pictures with separate families).

Our photographer said he would meet us as early as we wanted and i always thought the earlier the better...but it all comes with an expense. The RH charges $400 to let us in early or we can look at other sites and pay $200-$300 to get pics taken plus transportation there. Is it worth it/necessary? i think it is but FH thinks its a waste of money. we are having 2 photographers and we do want to be part of the cocktail hour

thanks for reading my drawn out post and tia for your help

Re: wedding day pictures

Just to give you a break down...I got married at Jericho Terrace and this was my day of...

2PM - Girls show up at JT
3PM - Boys show up at JT
3:30PM - Bride and Groom see each other for first time...
4PM - Guests started to arrive (invite said 4:30 since people are always late)
4:15PM - Ran inside because too many people were showing up
4:20PM - Signed Ketubah
4:45PM - BP did a quick rehearsal
5PM - Wedding supposed to start
5:10PM - Wedding started

We STILL had to take some pictures during the cocktail hour but got to go to 30 minutes of the cocktail hour (although if we did it all over again we wouldn't have gone to cocktail hour bc we never got to the food and we were completely overwhelmed with people coming up to us,

Honestly, I would have started pictures earlier somewhere else to get in more pictures but it really depends on what you want and how your photographer works...ours s*cked!

Re: wedding day pictures

Talk to your photographer. Ketubah takes all of 15-20 minutes and obviously you need a quick rehearsal but we only had about 2 hours of pictures with families/friends and we actually took pictures in both the city and at our venue....

My advice is to ask your photographer if its doable to do in 2 hours if you have a good tight schedule. What you will need to do is tell your families they need to be there at a certain time (and I'd probably give a time 20 minutes before when you actually need them there) and stick to the schedule. Mine was a bit of a mess with family (my uncle was wandering around looking for someone he knew at the venue) but in the end, we finished pics quicker than I thought was possible.

Re: wedding day pictures

i was in the same situation ... i got to the RH at 9am for my 11:30am ceremony (with ketubah signing in there somehwre).

My photog said it was plenty of time but in reality it was not.

part of it was that i got to the RH a little late (about 15 minutes)

another part was that the next 20 minutes or so were spent in the bridal suite getting dressed (i had my hair & makeup done prior, but got dressed at the RH)

but the main part was that my photographer was awful and very very VERY slow

ETA: i'd add the extra hour or so ... but maybe you could just take some pictures wherever you're all meeting up and getting ready (the hotel or house or whatnot)