Best Season for a Vancouver Wedding

Vancouver is a year-round wedding destination, and each season produces a different city. Here is what you are choosing between.

April: Cherry Blossom and Spring Light

Vancouver's cherry blossom season peaks in late March to early April depending on the year, earlier than Toronto by three to four weeks. The Kerrisdale, Kitsilano, and West End neighbourhoods have Japanese cherry trees lining residential streets in a way that is different from the park concentration in Toronto. The blossoms are on neighbourhood streets rather than a single park, which means less crowd pressure and more location variety. The spring light in Vancouver in April is clear and warm when the clouds break, which they do regularly between rain periods. For a cherry blossom wedding session in Vancouver, the streets of Kitsilano between 8am and 10am on a clear April morning are among the best conditions of the year.

June and July: Long Days

Sunset in Vancouver in late June is after 9:15pm. The golden hour for wedding photography runs from approximately 8pm to 9:30pm. A June or July wedding with a ceremony at 4pm, dinner, and a portrait session at 8:30pm uses the extraordinary late evening light that is only available in the longest weeks of the year. The West Vancouver waterfront at this hour, with alpenglow on the mountains and the sky still holding colour long after the sun has dropped behind the horizon, is the strongest outdoor portrait condition Vancouver produces.

September and October: The Peak Window

September is the most consistently strong month for Vancouver wedding photography. The summer crowds thin after Labour Day. The light angle drops and warms. The North Shore mountains above West Vancouver begin their colour change in late September, with the alpine larch and lower-elevation deciduous trees turning through October. The city is in the late summer warmth without the full summer visitor pressure. For couples with date flexibility, early September to mid-October is the most photographic window of the year.

November Through February: Rain Season

Vancouver's wet season runs from October through March. Rain is frequent and the overcast light is specific to this period. Gastown in rain is among the strongest wedding portrait environments I photograph in all year: the cobblestone wet and reflecting the heritage lamps, the brick darkened by moisture, the quiet of early morning with the rain on the street. For couples who accept that rain is possible and are willing to work with it, November through January Vancouver produces photographs that dry-weather cities cannot. The clouds also break regularly during this period, and a clear afternoon in November with low sun following a morning rain gives a quality of light that is specific to the Pacific Coast in winter.