Cape Cod Beach Wedding Tides: Every 2027 Saturday at Sunset
Which 2027 Saturdays have low tide during the golden hour on Cape Cod, from NOAA predictions — and which beaches the tide actually changes.
Every couple planning a Cape Cod wedding is told to check the tide, and almost nobody is told what to do with the answer. So we worked it out properly: for every Saturday of 2027, at the beaches we actually film on, where the tide will be when you step outside for portraits.
Two things came out of it. The first is that the tide matters enormously at some Cape beaches and barely at all at others. The second is a scheduling quirk that is genuinely useful if your date is already booked.
Where the tide actually changes the beach
Cape Cod has two coastlines with very different tides. On the bay side the water moves a long way; on Nantucket Sound it moves much less. These are the mean ranges between high and low water from NOAA’s 2027 predictions, with the speed the water moves at the middle of the tide:
| Beach or harbour | Mean range | Mid-tide rate |
|---|---|---|
| East Dennis (Cape Cod Bay) | 9.7 ft | 2.4 ft/h |
| Chatham | 5.1 ft | 1.3 ft/h |
| Wychmere, Harwich Port | 3.6 ft | 0.9 ft/h |
| Newport | 3.3 ft | 0.8 ft/h |
| Hyannis Port | 3.1 ft | 0.8 ft/h |
| Nantucket | 3.0 ft | 0.7 ft/h |
| Cotuit | 2.4 ft | 0.6 ft/h |
That is a fourfold difference between East Dennis on Cape Cod Bay and Cotuit on the Sound. At Wychmere Beach Club, where we have filmed more weddings than anywhere else, the water moves about three and a half feet between high and low — noticeable, but it does not transform the beach. Drive forty minutes north to the bay shore and it moves nearly ten.
One honest caveat: a tidal range in feet is not a beach width. How much sand appears at low water depends on how steeply that particular beach shelves, which varies from one stretch to the next and changes over the years. What the table tells you reliably is where tide is worth planning around at all. On the bay side it is the single biggest variable in how your beach will look. On the Sound side it is a detail.
The 2027 Saturdays with low tide at golden hour
For the venues on Nantucket Sound, the question couples actually ask is simpler: will the beach be at its widest when we come out for portraits? We took every Saturday of 2027, found the sunset time for Harwich Port from the US Naval Observatory, and calculated the predicted tide height half an hour before sunset — the middle of the window when we would normally take you out.
| Month 2027 | Near low | Near high | Low-tide Saturdays |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 2 | 1 | 2, 23 |
| February | 2 | 2 | 6, 20 |
| March | 2 | 2 | 6, 20 |
| April | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| May | 2 | 3 | 8, 22 |
| June | 2 | 2 | 5, 19 |
| July | 0 | 1 | — |
| August | 1 | 0 | 21 |
| September | 1 | 1 | 18 |
| October | 3 | 2 | 2, 16, 30 |
| November | 2 | 2 | 13, 27 |
| December | 2 | 2 | 11, 25 |
Across the whole year, 20 of 2027’s 52 Saturdays have the tide near its low point as the light goes, 18 have it near high, and 14 land somewhere in between. In the peak season from May to October it splits evenly: nine Saturdays near low, nine near high, nine in the middle.
July 2027 is the outlier. Not one of its five Saturdays has low water during the golden hour. If a wide beach at sunset is the thing you care most about, July is the month to avoid next year.
The useful part: neighbouring Saturdays are opposites
Here is the finding we did not expect. The tide runs on a cycle of about 12 hours 25 minutes, so it drifts roughly 50 minutes later each day. Over seven days that adds up to nearly six hours — almost exactly half a tidal cycle. Which means that one Saturday to the next, the tide at sunset tends to flip from one extreme to the other.
In 2027, 44 of the 51 consecutive Saturday pairs cross from the lower half of the range to the upper half or back, and the median shift between neighbouring Saturdays is 54 percentage points. Put the other way round: when a Saturday has high water during the golden hour, 86 percent of the time the Saturday immediately before or after has low water.
So if you have your heart set on a wide beach and your date falls on a high-tide Saturday, you do not need to move your wedding by a month. One week in either direction will almost certainly do it. That is a far easier conversation to have with a venue than a change of season.
How we worked this out
Everything above comes from public data, and you can check any of it:
- Tides are NOAA Tides and Currents predictions for 2027, on the MLLW datum, in local time. Wychmere Harbor is station 8447506; the others are Chatham 8447435, Nantucket 8449130, East Dennis 8447241, Hyannis Port 8447605, Cotuit 8447675 and Newport 8452660.
- Sunset times come from the US Naval Observatory for the coordinates of Wychmere Beach Club, not from a generic Boston figure. Sunset on the Cape runs a few minutes behind the city.
- Heights between high and low water are interpolated, because Wychmere is a subordinate station and NOAA publishes only its high and low times. We fit the standard harmonic curve between consecutive tides, then tested that method against Chatham, where NOAA publishes both. Across 8,758 hourly readings the median error was 0.06 ft and 95 percent were within 0.20 ft — comfortably accurate enough.
These are predictions, not measurements. A strong onshore wind or low barometric pressure can lift the real water level several inches above the prediction, and the reverse happens too. Treat the table as the shape of the day, not a survey.
What we would actually tell you
- On Nantucket Sound, do not reschedule for the tide. Three and a half feet is not the difference between a good film and a bad one. The light matters more.
- On the bay side, do check it. At nearly ten feet of range, low water and high water are genuinely different locations.
- If the tide is wrong for your date, look one week either side before you look one month.
- Pick your ceremony time from the sun first. Our sunset and golden hour table is the one to start with; tide is the refinement.
- Tell us the tide for your date and we will plan where to take you. At low water on the Sound there is firm wet sand that reflects the sky, which is worth walking out onto.
We film across the Cape, the islands and the rest of New England at no additional travel cost. You can see recent coastal work in our gallery and in our Cape Cod guide, check what our collections include, or tell us about your day.