The hour after
the ceremony,
and how not to lose it

Ceremonies are planned to the minute. Dinner is planned to the course. The hour in between is usually described as “aperitivo” and left to arrange itself, which is why it is the part of the day people most often say went past without them.

The first ten minutes belong to nobody

What happens immediately after a ceremony is the closest thing to unfiltered emotion in the whole wedding: people arrive at you in the order they were sitting, half of them are crying, and nobody has thought about their face. It photographs better than anything staged later.

So the useful instruction is not to hurry it. Do not walk away for photographs while the queue is forming. Stand still and let it come to you — I can work in that, and ten minutes of it produces more usable frames than half an hour of arranged groups.

Group photographs: a short list, and a loud person

Formal groups are the part of the hour that eats it. Every group takes about the same time regardless of size, and almost all of that time is spent finding people, not photographing them. Ten groups is a lot. Six is comfortable.

The single thing that makes the difference is not the photographer: it is one person on each side who knows everybody by face and is willing to say names at volume. Ask two people in advance and tell them it is their job. With them, the list runs in fifteen minutes. Without them, the same list takes forty and everyone remembers it as the boring part.

A group photograph is a logistics problem wearing a camera’s clothes.

Portraits: later than you think, shorter than you fear

The instinct is to do the couple portraits straight after the ceremony, when the adrenaline is still up. That is usually the worst light of the day and the moment you are least yourselves — still performing, still counting the guests you have not greeted.

Twenty minutes later in the hour, or better still near its end, two things have happened: the sun has dropped and you have relaxed. Ten or fifteen minutes then is worth an hour earlier. I would rather have that quarter of an hour twice, once now and once when the light goes, than a single long session that turns into work.

Eat something, and be seen doing it

Practically: the couple almost never eats during the aperitivo, and it shows by the speeches. Ask the planner to put a plate somewhere private for the two of you, and take five minutes. It is also, reliably, one of the better photographs of the day — two people who have just been married eating standing up in a corner, laughing about it.

A shape that works

Ten minutes of congratulations where you stand. Six groups, called by two loud friends, in one place with decent light. Twenty minutes with your own guests, drink in hand, unphotographed in any organised sense. Fifteen minutes of portraits at the end. Dinner starts on time because the hour had a shape rather than an aspiration.