Wedding Drone Footage in Boston: The Airspace at 20 Venues

Every one of our collections includes drone footage “where regulations allow”. Couples quite reasonably ask what that means for their venue, and most of what you find online does not help. Drone guides for Boston tend to say that most of the city sits under Logan’s airspace and leave it there, and venue pages rarely mention it at all.

So we looked it up. For each of the 20 venues we have filmed in New England, we checked the FAA’s own airspace data at the venue’s location: what kind of airspace it sits in, how high a drone can fly there with automatic approval, and whether it falls inside one of the stadium restrictions that close the sky on game days. The answers vary more than you might expect, sometimes within a block or two.

The airspace at 20 venues

How to read it

• Ceiling is the height the FAA will approve automatically, in near real time, through its LAANC system, for a pilot who holds a Part 107 remote pilot certificate. Anything higher needs a manual request.
• 0 ft means no automatic approval at all. A pilot can still file what the FAA calls further coordination: a request, made at least 72 hours ahead, that an FAA air traffic manager reviews by hand. It may be approved, approved at a lower height, or turned down, so treat it as a possibility rather than a plan.
• Class B is Logan’s airspace; Class D and Class E belong to the smaller airports at Beverly, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Class G is uncontrolled and needs no FAA authorization. The usual rules still apply everywhere: a certificated pilot, no higher than 400 feet, and the drone in sight at all times.
• Restricted on game days means the venue sits inside a stadium restriction that switches on during major games. More on that below.

On the waterfront, the answer is zero

The pattern in Boston is simple. The four venues right on the water — the Boston Harbor Hotel, the InterContinental, the Omni at the Seaport and the Exchange Conference Center on the Fish Pier — all sit in grid squares where the automatic ceiling is zero. They look straight across the harbour at Logan, and the FAA leaves no automatic room there at all.

That does not mean a waterfront wedding can never have aerial footage. It means it cannot be arranged at short notice, it depends on someone at the FAA saying yes, and the answer may be a lower height than you hoped for. If a drone shot at one of these venues matters to you, raise it when you book, not the week before.

It is also worth asking whether you need one. At the Boston Harbor Hotel the most recognisable shot of the day is the arch onto Rowes Wharf, taken from the ground, and the harbour rooms give you the water without leaving the building. We wrote about filming at Rowes Wharf separately.

A few blocks inland, 150 feet

Move away from the water and the ceiling rises. The State Room on State Street, the Boston Public Library and the Harvard Club in Back Bay, and the Hyatt Regency across the river in Cambridge all sit in squares with automatic approval up to 150 feet. At the State Room and in Back Bay a zero-foot square begins within a block or two, so exactly where the pilot stands matters.

In practice 150 feet goes less far downtown than it sounds. It is roughly the height of a twelve-storey building, and in the Financial District most of the neighbours are taller. The State Room is 33 floors up, so the view from its windows is higher than a drone could fly there with automatic approval — and it is the view one of our State Room films opens with. We wrote about filming at the State Room too.

Game days close the sky

One more restriction catches people out, and it applies to all eight of our Boston and Cambridge venues. Whenever there is a Major League Baseball, NFL or Division I college football game at a stadium that seats 30,000 or more, drones are prohibited within three nautical miles of it (about three and a half miles), up to 3,000 feet, from an hour before the scheduled start until an hour after the game ends. It is a standing FAA restriction that switches on by itself on game days.

Fenway Park is within three nautical miles of every one of those venues, from 0.4 nautical miles at the Harvard Club to 2.7 at the Fish Pier. On a Red Sox home day, the sky over all of them is closed for most of the afternoon and evening.

The 2027 schedule is already out. The Red Sox have fourteen Saturday home games: April 3 and 17; May 1, 15 and 22; June 5 and 26; July 3 and 17; August 7 and 21; and September 4, 11 and 25. Start times have not been set, but in 2026 the Red Sox played eleven Saturday home games at Fenway and nine of them started at 4:10 pm. That puts the restriction from 3:10 pm until an hour after the final out — straight across the ceremony, the portraits and golden hour.

For autumn weddings in Back Bay and Cambridge, check the college football schedules too. The FAA’s list of qualifying stadiums includes Harvard Stadium, which is within three nautical miles of the Boston Public Library, the Harvard Club and the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Boston College’s Alumni Stadium sits just inside that distance of the Hyatt.

Outside the city, it is mostly easy

Leave Boston and the picture changes completely. On the North Shore, Misselwood in Beverly and Willowdale in Topsfield sit in Beverly Regional Airport’s controlled airspace, but with automatic approval all the way to 400 feet. On the islands, Nantucket Golf Club gets 400 feet and Farm Neck on Martha’s Vineyard 200. Everywhere else we checked — Wychmere, Chatham Bars Inn and the Wianno Club on the Cape, the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Fruitlands in Harvard, Wyndhurst in Lenox, and Castle Hill Inn and Glen Manor House in Rhode Island — is uncontrolled airspace, where no FAA authorization is needed.

Alyssa & Brandon Misselwood Events Wedding Highlight VideoKatie & Hugh || Nantucket Golf Club Wedding Highlight Video

Both of these films open from the air. Alyssa and Brandon’s begins out over the water at Misselwood, with the house on its point above the rocks. Katie and Hugh’s starts high over the Nantucket Golf Club’s course and comes down to the clubhouse and its tented terrace. At venues like these one aerial shot tells the viewer exactly where they are, and the airspace makes it straightforward.

Uncontrolled does not mean guaranteed. The coast is windy, and a drone cannot fly safely in every breeze — our look at thirty years of Saturday weather includes how windy a wedding day usually is, month by month. At Wychmere, where we have filmed four weddings, the aerial shot works because the beach, the harbour and the Sound all fit in one frame; we wrote about it in our Wychmere Beach Club guide.

What the airspace doesn’t decide

• The venue. The FAA controls the air, not the ground. A venue or landowner can refuse permission to take off or land on its property, so ask before assuming.
• Your guests. The rules limit flying directly over people, so wedding aerials are shots of the setting — the house, the coast, the course — rather than overhead shots of the dance floor.
• Temporary restrictions. The FAA can close airspace at short notice, for VIP visits among other things. The table above is a planning guide, not a clearance, and your pilot should check again close to the day.
• The weather. Wind and rain can ground a drone on the day, whatever the airspace allows.

Questions to ask your videographer

1. Does your drone pilot hold an FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate? Commercial drone work requires one.
2. What is the automatic ceiling at our venue? Is it zero?
3. Is there a game at a qualifying stadium within three nautical miles on our date?
4. If our venue needs a manual request, when will you file it?
5. If the drone cannot fly, what will you use for the opening shot instead?

Planning a wedding at one of these venues, or one that is not on the list? Tell us your venue and date and we will tell you what the airspace allows. You can see how aerial footage fits into our films in the gallery, and what each collection includes.