A winter wedding in Ireland: beating the four o'clock sunset

We love winter weddings. Candles that mean something, a fire in the drawing room, the house lit up in the dark as the cars pull in, and a kind of closeness in the room that a June wedding never quite has because half the guests are outside. We would happily film nothing else from November to February. But there is one hard fact about them, and it decides the whole afternoon, so we would rather tell you now than on the day.

In December the sun sets in Dublin at six minutes past four. By ten to five it is fully dark. If your ceremony is at two and runs an hour, you walk out of the church at three into the last hour of daylight, and by the time the confetti is done and everyone has found their cars, the outdoor light is gone. Not fading. Gone.

A two o'clock winter ceremony leaves about forty minutes of daylight, and most of it is spent in the car park.

The arithmetic

Those are Dublin times for the middle of December, and the west of the country runs about ten minutes later. November's sunset is 4:29, January's 4:36, February's 5:35, and usable outdoor light lasts roughly forty minutes past each of those before it goes. We have put the whole year in a table if you want to see how steep the drop is from October.

Three ways around it

Move the ceremony earlier

Twelve or one o'clock. This is the simplest fix and the one most couples resist, because it feels early and because it makes the day long. But a one o'clock ceremony puts you outside at two with two hours of light, and the day is no longer than a summer one. It starts earlier and finishes when the band does anyway. Rathsallagh, one of our favourite winter venues, has a house ceremony slot at half three, and we have written honestly about what that does to a December wedding. It is the same problem in a stronger form.

See each other before the ceremony

The first look. The two of you meet, privately, an hour or two before the ceremony, and the portraits happen then, in daylight, unhurried, with nobody waiting. In summer this is a preference. In winter it is close to the only way to have outdoor portraits at all with a two o'clock ceremony. We have made the case for it separately, because it deserves more than a paragraph, but the short version is that the couples who do it have never regretted it, and it turns the winter light problem into no problem at all.

Let it be dark

The third way is to stop fighting it. Take ten minutes outside straight after the ceremony while there is still a glow, then come in and let the evening be the evening. Winter venues are lit for this. Candles on every surface, the fire, fairy lights in the trees outside the window, and later, sparklers on the steps with the house blazing behind you. Some of our favourite portrait footage was shot at six o'clock in January in the dark, with a single lantern and the two of you and nothing else, and no summer wedding can have that.

What we do differently in winter

We bring more light, and we use it more carefully. Our cameras see well in the dark, better than eyes do, so a candlelit room looks candlelit on film rather than murky. For the portraits after dark, a small warm light held by one of us, out of frame, gives the two of you a glow that matches the lanterns and doesn't look like a floodlight. We never light a speech. And we shoot the house from outside once it's dark, because a country house with every window lit against a black sky is the establishing shot winter gives you for free.

Before you book a winter date

• Look up the sunset for your actual date. Then subtract your ceremony length and twenty-five minutes for the walk out. If the number is under an hour, you need one of the three plans above.
• Ask the venue what time they light the candles. And whether the outdoor lights and the fire are going by the time guests arrive. A winter venue at its best is a different place from the same venue at three in the afternoon.
• Book a ceremony slot, not just a date. Many venues offer two or three. In winter the difference between the one o'clock and the three o'clock is the difference between portraits in daylight and none.
• Talk to your photographer about the first look. They will have an opinion, and it will probably be the same as ours.

The dark itself has never spoiled a wedding for us. Being surprised by it has. Every winter wedding where the couple understood the light in advance has been among the most beautiful of the year, and a fair few of the ones who didn't have said afterwards they wished someone had told them. So we are telling you.