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We present a novel method for photonic crystal model reduction which enables efficient band structure calculations. In our method, which we refer to as Reduced Bloch mode expansion, we employ a natural basis composed of a selected reduced set of Bloch eigenfunctions. The reduced basis is selected within the irreducible Brillouin zone at high symmetry points determined by the photonic crystal structure and group theory. At each of the reciprocal lattice selection points, a number of Bloch eigenfunctions are selected up to the frequency range of interest for the band structure calculations. Being in line with the well known concept of modal analysis, the proposed method maintains accuracy while reducing the computation time by up to two orders of magnitudes or more depending on the size and extent of the calculations.