I’ve heard way too many newly married couples complain because they went “cheap” on the photography. Often brides consult wedding planning sites and ask the question: What should a photographer cost? After the wedding photography “horror stories” and all the questions about cost, I thought I’d try to give some insights into this thing called wedding photography. To make this an easy read, I’ve broken the discussion into a series of posts, 5 parts all together:
Part 1 – Wedding Planning Sites
Part 2 – Wedding Photographer Selection Criteria
Part 3 – Wedding Photography Budgets
Part 4 – Wedding Photography Contracts
Part 5 – Wedding Photography Copyrights
This way you can read the portions that interest you.
Wedding Photography For The Bride/Groom; Part 1 – Wedding Planning Sites
Type “wedding planning web sites” into Google and you’ll get over 600,000 hits. That’s a lot! Remember this: sites exist for one reason, to make money. So, somewhere, someone pays money. Either you the bride or the vendor using the site will pay something. In some cases you can get contact information for a vendor or you can broadcast your wedding details to a group of vendors and request a quote. If you’re using a wedding planning site and access to a “boat-load” of vendors is free, than the vendors are paying the fee.
Many photographers don’t publish a price list on sites like these. Why? There are too many variables. When you work with these sites, give a realistic estimate of your budget. If you want a $200 photographer, say so. Yes, we pay to get your lead from sites like these. Ever heard the saying; “There’s no such thing as a Free Lunch!” Yeah you thought everything is free on wedding planning sites. Photographer wedding fees go towards paying for information from these sites. So you end up paying one way or another. Don’t expect a photographer/business person to pay for a $200 opportunity, let alone try to “out-bid” 4 other low-ballers. We’re not interested.
If you are using a wedding planning site to research pricing, go ahead and start with your low-end budget number. Sit back and see what happens. When most likely, no one responds, up the number and wait again. Remember what I said earlier about paying for a $200.00 opportunity!
In the next post we’ll discuss Wedding Photographer Selection Criteria.
Tom Szabo, “Phot-art-ographer”
A Thomas Image
www.athomasimage.com
