When to book a wedding photographer (and why too late comes sooner than you think)
A Saturday in May does not wait for anyone. A short piece of calendar arithmetic and the order of moves that secures your date calmly.
Lazar Mihajlović
Published: 27 July 2026
Every winter I get at least a few messages of the same shape: the wedding is in May, a Saturday, are you free? And every winter I have to tell at least half of them that the date is no longer available. Not because I am in demand beyond all measure, but because calendar arithmetic is merciless. Saturday is the key word in that arithmetic, because everything revolves around it: the venue, the band, and my calendar too.
This text is a short guide through that arithmetic: how far ahead dates are asked for, why exactly that far, and in what order to make your moves so that you secure your date while you are still the one choosing, and not the calendar choosing for you.
Peak season fills up nine to twelve months earlier
May, June, September and the beginning of October are the dates everyone wants. Couples getting married in those months book a photographer right after the venue as a rule, which means in the autumn or winter of the previous year. If you are aiming for peak season, nine to twelve months in advance is not an exaggeration, it is the average. Around here you can add the habit of tying big dates to holidays and long weekends, so those dates go even faster.
That does not mean the other months are wide open. April, the end of October and the odd winter Saturday can also go a year ahead, often to couples who have already seen how I work at somebody else's wedding. The rule is simple: the more important the date is to you, the earlier it should be locked in.
Saturdays are a limited resource
I photograph one wedding a day, always. From the middle of April to the end of October there are about thirty Saturdays and that is my entire capacity for the season, because your wedding deserves someone who was not shooting until four in the morning the night before. I do not change that rule for anyone, because tiredness shows exactly where it must not, in the frames.
When you subtract the already booked dates from those thirty Saturdays, only a handful remain free in peak season. Not one of them waits, because the same Saturday of the same spring is usually asked for by several couples. Good dates do not disappear because somebody is in a hurry. They disappear because there are physically few of them. That is why I answer the question of whether a date is free straight away and without beating about the bush, because half of your planning depends on that answer.
What if the wedding is in a couple of months?
Ask anyway. Dates sometimes free up, and Friday and Sunday are often available even when Saturday is not. Weddings outside peak season, from November to March, can almost always be arranged at shorter notice. The worst you can get is an honest answer. The only thing I do not recommend is waiting out of politeness: couples sometimes delay their enquiry because they think it is too early, and too early practically does not exist in this line of work.
Dates outside peak season come with a small bonus: a calmer organisation. Venues are more flexible, suppliers more available, and I have more room to scout the location before the wedding and to meet you for coffee without watching the clock.
The order of moves: date, venue, then photographer
First the date and the venue, because without them nobody can confirm anything. Right after that the photographer and everyone else who can only be in one place on a given day. Decoration, the cake and the small details can wait, the date cannot. The same advice applies to every supplier who cannot be in two places on the same day: book them first and leave everything that moves easily for later.
If you are in the choosing phase, I wrote the guide to choosing a photographer for exactly that step: what to look for in albums and how to recognise that you have found your person.
Lazar Mihajlović Photography
Check your date in time
Send me the date and the location and I will get back to you as soon as I can with an answer about whether that Saturday is still free.
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