Dec 02 2008
How did you determine what you spent on your wedding photography?
Christine S asked:
Did you have an entire wedding budget?
What factors did you base your spending with your photographer?
Did you have an entire wedding budget?
What factors did you base your spending with your photographer?
I’m curious to know. 
Thanks!
Sorry for not clarifying - I am a wedding photographer and am curious how brides calculate this important factor into their wedding budgets. Just looking for insight at the moment.
But thank you for your comments and replies thus far!
Give us your opinion
9 Responses to “How did you determine what you spent on your wedding photography?”
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I am not married yet. My day is May 30, 2009, but we are going with someone that was referred to us by a close family member. He did a good job for her and the price is 580.00 and she recieved a truckload of photos. I say go with someone that you trust.
Since my fiance and I never like the way we look in pictures anyway, we decided early on that photography wouldn’t be a huge priority for us. What’s the point of spending like $1000 on a bunch of pictures we probably will think we look dumb in? LOL we’d rather put that money towards the food and open bar for our guests. But we do feel like we need some sort of photographs of the wedding for posterity, so we got our friend, an amateur photographer, to do it for us. We’re paying him about $100 or so, as sort of a tip since he agreed to do it for free as our wedding gift. We’ll probably only ask him to take some key pictures (me walking down the aisle, us kissing at the end) and a few posed pictures with our bridal party, and then we’re just going to turn our guests loose with disposable cameras for the reception to get some wild candid shots from different perspectives. So that’s our story…
We’re not married yet, but we’ve booked our photographer and yep, we have a total budget, broken down to every last penny.
I’m not going to lie, we totally splurged on the photographer. We both have an artistic eye, and it was really important to us to have amazing photos that we’ll keep for the rest of our lives. To us, it made sense to invest in the best. We basically booked the photographer we both liked, figured out the cost for what we wanted, and based everything else around that cost.
But for some people, that’s the food or the venue or even the dress. For us, it was the photographer. Just figure out what your priorities are and build around that (while having a set amount for your total wedding, of course).
Yes, I have an entire wedding/honeymoon budget. We cannot go a penny over $7,000 and if I add something here, I have to take it away from there. I also have to allow for overages or unexpected fees. Food will likely cost more in December than today. I wanted a more expensive ring, so we took it out of the wedding budget.
I was just going to have studio photos, but posters on this board recommended that I contact a community college. I did so and the teacher recommended some students. So, I have 2 students who will be coming who clearly do portrait-type photography well. My choice was based on my budget as well as my expectations. While several guests are good photographers, I want them to enjoy the festivities rather than monkeying around with a camera.
If you want a professional, but need to cut costs, ask the photographer about wedding only (no reception) or if the cost changes if you have fewer photos and/or no attendants. My Aunt and Uncle had no attendants and only wedding photos, so their costs were half what the photographer ordinarily charged (he only had to drive a couple of blocks).
My fiance & I decided we wanted to spend absolutely no more than $12k on our wedding and wanted to be around $10K.
1. First, we sat down & estimated how many people we were going to be inviting and how many would actually come.
2. We researched our locations and got per head prices.
3. We took the leftover money and split it amongst the flowers, DJ, photographer and other essentials like the wedding favors, attendant gifts, toasting flutes, cake cutter, etc.
4. We spent about $6K on wedding venue (that included open bar and the wedding cake), $750 on DJ, $1500 on photographer that gave us a CD of our photos so we can print out duplicates anytime we want from home.
5. Remember, most photographers put in their contracts about being fed at your reception. Check with where you are having it. My place did a discounted plate price for “service people”. Service people usually include the judge/officiant, DJ/band, and photographer.
GOOD LUCK & CONGRATULATIONS!
We did have budget but we sat down and talked about our ideas and decided that we each pick one thing that we considered to be most important to us and that would be the things that we spent the most on and the rest we had to make fit our budget.
I choose photo and video because it is the one thing I will have for the rest of my life to remember our day by and will be passed on for generations to come. He choose the place and food was most important thing (We looked at Venues that held both ceremony and Reception and catering in the same location) Made it easy on us and our guest.
It was really easy to fit the rest into the budget. I did a lot of price checking and looking over contracts before I signed any! I also had almost 2 years to plan and budget. I budgeted so well it we actually came in under budget by 4,000 dollars! We used to put more in to bar, bought few more goodies for our guest! We actually put the rest in the home we own and spent some on the honeymoon!
I say look around do research and price check, some companies will match there competitors or give you 10% lower then the others! Look over contract very carefully.
Have fun planning best wishes and good luck!
Well, really it’s an issue of what I can afford/want to pay (not much) and what I want (a lot).
I don’t have a itemized budget yet (just under a year a way) but I do have a set amount in mind for a total amount and amounts in mind for what I’m willing to pay for something.
Factors that I would base spending for a photographer:
1. Experience
2. Quality of work
3. Total package offered
4. Reprint process (do I get a copyright waiver so I can have them printed for the lowest cost)
I just posted a question about 2 photographers I’ve looking at, one is incredibly, incredibly inexpensive at $150 for the 2-3 hours I would want them for. He’s a little inexperienced and his quality is alright, I think it’s on par with the $1500-$2000 photographers I saw but I would never pay that amount for that quality. They would be nice photos and at $150 definitely worth looking into at least.
The 2nd photographer I think has amazing images, some of the best I’ve seen. Her rates are starting at $3500, and if I had the $ to spend I actually would consider it. I would rather pay the extra $1000 then go with some of the $2500 photographers I looked at. Since I really can’t afford that her and I are going to talk about working out a barter deal where I perform services that she needs and she’ll do the photography for my wedding.
My whole budget for the entire wedding was $5000 so when I saw wedding photographers that were charging thousands of dollars I knew I couldn’t use them. I read somewhere that instead of having a photographer come for the whole event, you can save a lot of money by having a one hour photo shoot. I called up a team of local photographers who were both supposed to be very good and explained that I was having a low-budget wedding and really couldn’t have much done. They immediately mentioned they could do a one-hour photo shoot. It was $150 for the photo shoot and $85 each for two proof books. That seemed to be very reasonable for my budget so I went with them. The one who came to do my wedding did a really exceptional job.
Photography was going to be very important for us because it’s a day that cannot be replaced so we decided to base it on their work. Our budget was $2500 and the rest was less important besides the venue.