What lighting kit do you actually need for your first weddings?

Why there are no prices here

A kit article with prices is stale by the next promotion and wrong in the next country. Our source record for this pillar holds manufacturer specifications, fetched and dated, and no pricing, so this chapter prices nothing and instead teaches the part that stays true: what the spec sheet says, what it hides, and what order to acquire things in. Bring your own current prices to the framework; the framework will outlive them.

Reading a spec sheet like someone who has been burned

The off camera chapter establishes what a guide number is; here is how makers present them. Canon’s EL-1 and EL-5 both headline a maximum guide number of 60 meters at ISO 100, and both publish the full table by zoom position, where the same two units read 31.9 and 36.0 at the 35mm coverage a wedding actually uses.¹ Nikon states the SB-5000 at 34.5 meters at 35mm, 55 at 200mm, with ISO, temperature, format, and illumination pattern all named,² which is the most fully conditioned guide number in our record and the template to hold every other sheet to. Godox states the AD200Pro II at GN 52 at 35mm with its speedlite head, GN 60 with the bare bulb head at 28mm, two numbers for one unit depending on the head fitted.³ The pattern across all of them: the headline is the longest zoom and the friendliest head; the working number lives in the table, at your zoom. A sheet that states its conditions is being honest with you; a retailer blurb quoting one bare number has already dropped them.

Watt seconds and guide numbers do not talk to each other

Here is the trap in comparing across brands. Godox publishes the V1Pro at 76 watt seconds of stored energy, and its spec table carries no guide number at all. Nikon publishes the SB-5000’s guide numbers and no watt second figure anywhere in its specifications.^2,4 One convention states energy in, the other states light out under stated conditions, and converting between them requires reflector efficiency and spectral terms that appear on no spec sheet. The standard reference’s guide number formula makes the point formally: it contains unit specific factors nobody publishes.⁵ So when a forum tells you unit A at 200 watt seconds is exactly such and such stops more than unit B at 76, that figure is a derivation resting on unpublished assumptions. The honest cross brand comparisons are: guide numbers at the same stated zoom and ISO where both makers publish them, and beyond that, a test frame with your own units, which settles it in one evening.

Recycle times and the duty cycle

The second spec that decides a wedding night is how fast the flash returns, and the published numbers carry a condition the internet always drops. Nikon’s specification tables for the SB-5000 give approximately 2.6 seconds minimum on alkaline cells and 1.8 on NiMH at manual full output, and the SB-700’s table states the measurement protocol: one full output flash every 30 seconds, fresh batteries, 20 degrees C.² A first dance asks for a frame every few seconds. The spec is not lying, it is measuring something gentler than a wedding, and a buyer comparing two makers’ recycle claims is comparing two different mercy levels unless both name their protocol. The working conclusions: NiMH over alkaline is the one upgrade the tables themselves justify, and staying at 1/8 power or below matters more than any battery, because low power recycling is near instant and full power recycling never is.

The buying order

1. One manual speedlight with a fully conditioned spec sheet. It is your bounce light on camera and your first off camera light; every chapter in this pillar runs on it.
2. The support kit that makes it a system: a stand with a wide base, a trigger pair, a ¾ CTO and ½ CTO gel, and NiMH cells. This step is cheaper than any flash and doubles what the flash can do.
3. The second identical speedlight. Identical, so power ratios stay predictable and one set of gels, batteries, and habits serves both. Rim light, rain light, or the reception corner light while the first rides the camera.
4. Only then, more power: a 200 watt second class unit with interchangeable heads earns its place when modifiers and sun fill enter your work, which for most people is well after wedding ten. Rent one first: an evening of renting answers what no spec sheet can.

Starting estimates showing what each stage of the kit unlocks. Assumes a full frame body and manual flashes with guide numbers in the 34 to 60 meter class at ISO 100 as published in the cited spec tables. Every row is a seed for a test frame in the relevant chapter, not a promise about any specific product.