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Yeah, we know it’s scary. Walking into a ceremony room that is DARK. The kind of room where your camera squints before you do. But well? We hate to say it… We’re seeing a rising trend of these dark, indoor, low lit, candle lit wedding ceremonies all around the wedding world of late. We loved this recent one captured by Abby Hart and this one featured this week by The Wed. And 2026 will only see more.

It’s not just winter and those shorts days. It’s those candlelight photoshoots and reception draping trends making their way into the ceremony. Couples are intentionally styling their whole wedding around this feeling. It is a vibe though right? Romantic, elegant, classy. And the photos are pretty dang cool when you get it right, but for many photographers it’s an unknown challenge.

A low light wedding is either TERRIFYING… or it’s an INVITATION.

You can just show up and hope the room behaves… (good luck) Or you can learn to master it ⬇️

See the light or make the light.
A low light wedding is gonna make you sharpen up on two of the most fundamental skills. Seeing the light and making the light.

You’re going to need to notice everything. Even the tiniest pockets of light. The direction the candle light. The way a white wall bounces back just enough glow to shape a face. In dark spaces, these small hints of light become your toolkit. If you can learn to read them, you’re already ahead. You’ll notice which side of the couple you can shoot from in the ceremony, which guests are sitting in that light pocket and will make for a good photo, and where that bigger chandelier is that will give enough light for a great portrait later. Go train your eyeballs!

AND when that fails, your light making techniques will come to the fore. Direct flash, a little modelling light or setting up a full constant light are going to make all the difference.

Master both, and low light stops feeling so daunting.
It becomes a style you can actually lean into.

Plan ceremonies before hand ⬆️
In a dark ceremony room like a ballroom, it’s all about your pre-planning. Talking the light through with the planner to make sure it’s going to be enough.

This could be asking for a spot light to highlight the couple during the ceremony. Yes, this is a major WIN. Turning off lights that are other ‘temperatures’ to the candle light in the room. Or adding MORE candles if you need to.

If you know it’ll be dark, don’t leave it to chance. Get a little light onto your couple standing at the front and be SURE about it.

Letting the light be the light ⬆️
Sometimes a room maybe dark and you might be tempted to pop on a flash or walk around with an LED in everyone’s face, but try it without additional light first and just let the light be the light. Embrace the low light feeling of a room. Embrace shooting darker and ‘under exposed’. That’s the vibe anyway right…

It may not be perfectly white balanced. But is it sexy? Yes. It may be underexposed and against all the rules. But is it a vibe? Yes! It’s warm, soft, dark and lowwwww. Sometimes it just works, so lean into it.

Lighting that complements ⬆️
If you are going to add light. Be sure that it complements and doesn’t TAKE OVER. If you are using flash, don’t overpower the whole room by bouncing that flash everywhere. Go the direct flash route and just light up your subject. Dial in the right amount of ambient light so your background still feels like it does to your EYES, and then manually set your flash power to light up just your subject.

Bonus tip: If you want to use a LED panel or light instead of a flash, this also works nicely. Please just ensure you have one that you can change the white balance on and dial it in nicely. *content creators we are looking at you with your little ‘blue’ LED panels!!

Curate around the light.
Maybe this one should be obvious… but we see too many doing the opposite. Embrace the low lit feeling for other shots on the day too please! Yes, we mean the details.

If you know the ceremony and reception are low lit - don’t go shoot the shoes or dress details in bright, natural light. Lean into the feeling and curate the rest of the day around the low lit feel as well. Find a little pocket of available light to shoot them in. Let them be dark. Let them be moody. Lean into it.

Bottega 53 seem to make it happen no matter where they are. Adapting colours and vibes to suit the scenery and couple. This wedding in the mountains in the west of China is no different. It’s a masterclass into leaning into the soft feeling of the day, but still jumping in for the right moments to make an image work.

Read the wedding featured now on lensel.com and get the behind the scenes insights from Bottega 53 themselves on how they shot it all….

And.. if you have a wedding you would like to submit to be featured, you can email through to [email protected]

⬇️ The unique vision of Ramone, curating this red colour pop like we’ve never seen before. Incredible.

⬇️ Mirrored compositions and strong frames. From someone outside the wedding bubble. Oh and we love the second last frame - must see.

⬇️ Yeah it’s not ‘adventure wedding photography’s’ moment right now, but these are incredibly clean versions of just that from Calia Photo.

⬇️ PURE. A single frame of goodness from a wedding photographer based in Japan.