What if it rains?
the honest answer.

IMG Weddings has photographed and filmed enough Jamaican afternoons to say this plainly: rain is not the problem couples think it is. A passing shower is ordinary here and it is usually over in less time than it takes to move everyone indoors. What costs you the day is not water. It is the delay that follows it.

Overcast is good light

This surprises people. A flat grey sky is an enormous soft box. Skin looks better, nobody squints, white dresses keep their detail, and the harsh shadow under everyone's eyes disappears. Some of the most flattering portraits we have made in Jamaica were taken under cloud that the couple apologised for.

Bright direct sun at one in the afternoon is a far harder photographic problem than steady cloud at four.

What actually hurts

The damage is to the schedule. A shower arrives, everyone moves inside, there is a sensible pause, and then a less sensible one while people finish drinks and find their shoes. Forty minutes disappear. If those forty minutes came out of the window before sunset, they are not recoverable, because the light does not wait and there is no second attempt.

That is the whole risk. Not the rain. The hour it quietly eats.

What we would plan

• Keep a protected buffer between the ceremony and the portraits. It is the first thing a delay eats and the only part that cannot move later.
• Decide in advance who calls the move indoors, and at what point. In practice the decision gets made late because nobody was given it.
• Ask the venue early what their wet weather plan actually is, and whether the indoor space photographs well. Many do. Some are a windowless function room, which is worth knowing in March rather than on the day.
• If the sky clears late, go back out. The light after rain on this island is frequently the best light of the day, and it is often ignored because everyone has mentally moved on to dinner.

What we will not tell you

We are not going to publish rainfall percentages by month. We have not measured them, and the figures that circulate on wedding sites are usually regional averages that say very little about one afternoon at one property. Ask your venue what they see. They watch the same sky every day of the year.