The rule of thumb: one camera per table

Most planning guides land on the same shortcut: one disposable camera per table, and a typical reception seats six to eight guests a table. A wedding for 100 guests, roughly a dozen tables, works out to ten to twelve cameras. It's not exact math, guests wander between tables and some cameras get more attention than others, but it's a reasonable starting point that scales with the room instead of the guest count alone.

Why tables, not headcount

A camera sitting on a table gets picked up by whoever's nearby that hour, not by one assigned owner, so counting by table matches how the cameras actually get used. Counting straight from the guest list instead, one camera per ten guests, say, tends to under-cover a reception with a big dance floor or a long cocktail hour, since a lot of the best moments never happen near the table that owns the camera.

Working the number for your guest list

Fifty guests, six to eight tables, six to eight cameras. A hundred guests, twelve to fourteen tables, ten to fourteen cameras. Two hundred guests, around twenty-five tables, twenty to twenty-five cameras. The range widens as the guest count grows, because seating gets less uniform at a bigger wedding, some tables of eight, some of six, a few high-tops that don't fit the pattern at all.

What pushes the number up

A ceremony and reception in separate rooms, or a cocktail hour on a different floor, both argue for more cameras, not because there are more guests but because a single camera can't cover two locations at once. A long day argues for more too: ceremony through last dance can easily outlast what one camera per table is built to capture, especially if the party runs past midnight.

The number this whole question disappears into

Every camera on that count is one more purchase, one more to collect at the end of the night, one more roll to drop off and wait on, and the total adds up fast once developing is included, worth running through our free cost calculator for the real number on your own guest list. A digital disposable camera skips the count entirely: every guest shoots from the phone already in their pocket, so there's no camera to buy, collect, or lose track of.