Wedding photography

The German wedding market compresses into roughly twenty Saturdays a year, between mid-May and mid-September. On each of those days every supplier is booked exactly once, which is why the advice to book twelve to eighteen months ahead is arithmetic rather than a sales tactic. The reverse is also true: a Friday in June or a Saturday in October is often still free six months out, costs the same, and has better light because the sun drops earlier.

The package includes a planning call with a running order, and that is the part that decides the day. It settles when the couple portraits happen — usually not straight after the ceremony but in the hour before sunset, which means dinner either starts earlier or is interrupted — where the wet-weather plan happens, and who calls the family groups together. Ten hours of coverage, five hundred edited photographs, a preview within 48 hours and the full gallery inside three weeks.

If you marry at a Standesamt or in a church, there is a third party on the day with rules of its own. What may be photographed in the registry office is decided by that office; in a church the parish decides, and both are settled in writing beforehand rather than at the door. Guests are the other half of it. They have no contract with us, and anyone who would rather not appear should have a chance to say so — a line on the invitation usually does it. If you want an unplugged ceremony with phones away, ask your guests yourselves or have a witness announce it; the same request lands badly coming from the photographer.

Booking is quick; the run-up to the day is not. Enquire through the form with the date and the place, we come back by phone or email with a set figure, and you confirm it in writing. What changes the cost is stated first: extra hours, a second photographer for getting ready in two places at once, faster delivery. Permit fees, for a palace garden for instance, sit on a separate line. The planning call and location walk-through follow nearer the date. The wedding photographs are yours to use privately without restriction and to share with your guests, and every frame is in the gallery in black and white as well.