Filming a winter wedding at the InterContinental Boston: snow on the Fort Point Channel, a candlelit ceremony, and a 4pm sunset to plan around.

Phoebe and Will married at the InterContinental Boston in December, and their film is the clearest example we have of something we tell couples all year: a winter wedding in the city is not a compromise. It is a different film, with its own advantages, and most of them come from planning around the one constraint that matters.

That constraint is daylight. In mid-December the sun sets in Boston at about 4:13pm, with the last usable light gone by a quarter to five. Everything after your ceremony happens after dark. Plan for that and a December wedding gives you candlelight, city lights through the windows and, if you are lucky, snow. Ignore it and you spend the one hour of good light getting into a car.

Where the hotel sits, and why it matters

The InterContinental stands at 510 Atlantic Avenue, with the Fort Point Channel immediately to its east and the brick warehouses of Fort Point on the far bank. That eastern outlook is the same situation as the Boston Harbor Hotel a few minutes up the waterfront, and it has the same consequence: the sun sets behind the building, not over the water. You will not get a sunset across the channel from here.

What you get instead is better suited to a film. An east-facing waterfront gives soft, even light on faces through the middle of the day, with no squinting and no harsh shadows, and after sunset the water and the sky go deep blue while the warehouse windows opposite come on. Phoebe and Will’s portraits by the water were shot in flat winter daylight with snow banked along the walk, and they are the most distinctive frames in the whole film — not despite the weather, but because of it.

A couple embracing on a snowy waterfront walk beside the Fort Point Channel, with brick warehouses across the water

What December gives you that June does not

Holiday decoration you do not have to pay for

The hotel was dressed for the season, and in the film it reads as production design. Lit trees flank the ceremony. Warm string lights sit behind guests during the speeches. None of it was hired for the wedding and all of it is on camera. If you are marrying in a city hotel in December, walk the public spaces with your photographer and videographer beforehand and decide which of them you want in your film.

An indoor wedding ceremony flanked by lit Christmas trees, with tall windows behind

Candlelight, used properly

Phoebe and Will’s aisle was lined with pillar candles and scattered petals on a dark floor. Candlelight is genuinely difficult to film — it is dim, and it flickers — but it is also the one light source that makes a room look like nowhere else. It works when there is enough of it, and when it is not fighting a bright ceiling fixture. Ask your venue to dim the house lights for the ceremony, and tell us the plan in advance so we bring the right lenses.

A candlelit wedding aisle lined with pillar candles and scattered petals on a dark floor

Snow is a bonus, not a plan

Snow on the ground made Phoebe and Will’s waterfront portraits. You cannot book it. What you can do is be ready to use it: shoes you can walk outside in, a coat you are happy to be filmed in, and twenty minutes held loosely in the timeline so we can go out when the light and the weather are both there at once.

Building a December timeline

With the sun down by a quarter past four, the arithmetic is unforgiving. Here is how we would build the day:

Do a first look. In December it is close to essential. Phoebe and Will saw each other before the ceremony, which is why there are portraits of the two of them in daylight at all.
Put portraits before the ceremony, not after. An afternoon ceremony that ends at five leaves you nothing outdoors.
Go outside at the brightest part of the day, which in December is the early afternoon rather than any golden hour worth the name.
Treat blue hour as a second window. The half hour after sunset over the channel is beautiful and very short. If you want it, we need to know in advance so we can be in position.
Expect the reception to be entirely after dark, and light it accordingly. This is where uplighting earns its money.

Our month-by-month sunset table has the exact figures for every month of 2027, including last light, so you can work backwards from the real number rather than a guess.

A word on winter dates

December is not the wettest month in Boston, and it is nowhere near the hottest. When we looked at thirty years of Saturday weather records, December Saturdays had meaningful rain 22 percent of the time — about the same as October, and less than April or May. The trade is daylight, not weather.

An indoor ceremony also removes the thing that most often forces a change of plan. There is no wet-weather version of a December wedding at the InterContinental, because the plan was always inside.

Planning notes

Tell us which rooms you have and whether the ceremony and reception are in the same space. A turnaround changes where we can be.
Ask about the house lights for a candlelit ceremony, and get the answer in writing.
Hold twenty minutes in the early afternoon for the waterfront, weather permitting.
Consider the hotel’s holiday decoration as part of your film, and pick which of it you want.
Budget for a second videographer if the ceremony is short and the light is gone by the end of it. Two cameras mean one of us can be shooting the room while the other stays with you.

The InterContinental is one of the venues in our guide to Boston wedding venues. You can watch more city weddings in our gallery, see what each collection includes, or tell us about your day.