When to Book Your Wedding Photographer

Firstly, congrats on your engagement! I’m sure you’re still buzzing from the excitement, but if you’re here, I’m sure you’re wondering when to book your wedding photographer. Nothing is worse than finding your dream photographer and realizing too late they’ve already booked your wedding date. Below are some tips for determining the ideal timeframe to book the photographer for your wedding.

How popular is your wedding date?

First off you’ll need to know the date you plan on getting hitched. If you have a wedding planner, they can probably give you an idea of how common the date you’ve selected is going to be. Late spring and early fall dates are especially coveted for a couple of reasons. Usually, the weather is more predictable, guests have more flexibility with vacation requests, and the grounds of wedding venues look most appealing. Also, be on the lookout for exciting date pairings such as 11/11 and the obvious holidays.

The more popular the wedding date the further in advance you should book your wedding photographer as their inquiry volume for that day will also increase.

How popular is the photographer?

Choosing your photographer shouldn’t be a popularity contest, but if you want one that’s more popular than others, it’s likely you’ll need to book further out in advance. One indicator can be the photographer’s engagement on social media. You don’t want to look solely on the follower count as some have inflated their numbers artificially, but you can tell pretty quickly from the engagement how legit those numbers are.

When did you get engaged?

A big surge of engagements happen around the holiday season and along with that our inquiry emails start flooding in. If you got engaged over the holidays and are planning on tying the knot the following summer, lock down your photographer quick!

Wedding Wire suggests booking your photographer ten months in advance, but depending on what we’ve covered above you might want to extend that to 12-14 months. Don’t go too far in advance. Some photographers might not be booking more than a year out and inquire about your wedding in two years may get the back burner as photographers are likely focused on this and the upcoming wedding seasons.