The Cost of Wedding Photography

Wedding photographers play a peculiar role on the wedding day; we’re invited into the very centre of a day of joint celebration for two families. Let’s be honest, it’s quite a big day — often called the ‘beginning of the rest of your lives’ or ‘a milestone event’ in your journey — a wedding day is very emotional. Wedding photographers become something like temporary confidantes for ten hours, and we’re allowed to witness some of the most emotional moments in a family’s history. Then, when it’s all over, we disappear with the whole thing captured and stored to be woven back into an incredible visual narrative of the day for you to relive over and over.

However, there is, of course, a literal cost. Wedding photography is a job and wedding photographers have to charge for their time, experience, and skill. Although this can sometimes feel like the elephant in the room, it’s a really important and relevant question. You simply won’t be able to afford some photographers, and others will be so cheap that you’ll probably be left wondering why. There’s no easy answer. Wedding photography doesn’t have a fixed cost or any guidelines or regulations to control costs and prices. Prices shift from year to year and vary wildly depending on where you are getting married, when you are getting married and the photographers themselves.

The Strange Landscape of Wedding Photography

With the explosion of digital photography technology, not only are almost all phones equipped with pretty good cameras, digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras are widespread and easy to use. Everyone knows someone with a ‘decent’ camera, and most of us know someone whose main hobby is photography. Photographers are everywhere, and as technology advances, taking good pictures gets easier and easier. That being said, owning a camera, even a really good one, doesn’t necessarily make you a good photographer, and absolutely doesn’t make you a good wedding photographer.

The Budding Photographer

Often, at the beginning of a potential photographer’s career, wedding photography is a shiny thing with the potential to make money from doing what you love — taking photos. Some of us start with weddings as a side hustle because they’re usually at weekends, and others because there is no barrier to entry — anyone with a camera can potentially decide to become a wedding photographer and go out and find clients. Of course, the easiest way to find clients is to be cheaper than everyone else, and that’s usually how it goes. Enthusiastic new photographers often decide to become wedding photographers and will take on any wedding job at a fraction of the price of experienced professionals. The risks with this scenario are clear, though — these photographers have little to no experience and have to use the first weddings that they shoot as a baptism of fire and a way to gain experience. While this is great for a photographer, it’s potentially terrible for the couple getting married. There are stories of terror on the internet.

These are the photographers whose services and prices populate the very bottom of the market. Often as low as a few hundred pounds a pop, they are budget-friendly but the risks are evident.

The Seasoned Pro

In my opinion, the buoyant middle of the market is where most of the seasoned professionals sit. Having decided to make wedding photography all or part of their photography business, they have spent years honing their craft, not only photography but also the service they deliver to couples. There is a huge number of incredible professionals here, with a range of different styles, approaches, and services they offer. That being said, there is also a large difference in prices that reflects all sorts of aspects of the business such as the services offered, types of wedding, and their ideal clients. There are also different ways photographers choose to charge their customers — some have set packages with a set amount of hours and different products, and others charge by the hour as well as travel.

Since there is such a huge variation in professionals here, the prices are also very varied. In the UK, the consensus seems to be that something around £1500-£2000 is about average, but there are plenty of professionals whose work starts in double-digit thousands.

The Masters

As with any industry, or any art form, there are those rare few that stand out from the crowd. These are the wedding photographers who have made their brand synonymous with their style of wedding photography. These are the unicorns you find on the Top 10 lists of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. These are almost household names such Jose Villa, KT Merry, John Dolan, Rebecca Yale, James & Schulze, or Dos Mas En La Mesa.

As you can imagine, photographers with this level of mastery, artistic vision, and, of course, demand, don’t come cheap. For us mere mortals, the likelihood is that these photographers are simply out of our price range.

Why the Vast Range?

So, why is there such a huge span of prices? Why does one photographer nervously ask for £1000 while others confidently start their prices at ten times that amount? The real reason is that more often than not, these variations in prices are an indication that photographers are not actually doing the same job. On the surface, a photographer is just a person who aims the lens and clicks the shutter button on the camera. But as with many things in life, this is an oversimplification. There are many more aspects to photographing a wedding that have nothing at all to do with the camera, and most don’t even have to do with the wedding itself.

Although the wedding day is the big fulcrum of wedding photography, the process of creating a couple’s wedding photographs starts months or years before. Wedding photographers almost always try to work with a certain type of couple who are having a certain type of wedding. We have narrowed this down based on our particular style and personality, as well as you the couple’s own tastes and personalities. The best wedding photographers will insist on meeting and talking to their couples at least once in person or via Zoom or Skype before the big day so they can make a connection and help build trust. We’ll also stay in touch through the months leading up to the wedding to talk about any changes, last-minute plans, and simply how you’re both feeling in the buildup to the wedding day.

Next comes the intensity of the event itself, a full day stretching into the night of concentrated focus making sure that we capture the most precious memories in the best way we can.

The third block of the process is the editing (choosing) and post-processing of the photos from your wedding day. Editing usually takes hours; choosing the perfect photos from thousands of options to perfectly tell the story of this one single day in your lives in a way that’s both truthful and artistic is a tough process. Finally, we edit the collection of images so that they work together and have maximum visual and emotional impact.

Emotional Investment and Misconception

Somehow, popular culture has cast a bit of a shadow on wedding photography, relegating it to a ‘lesser’ art or a stepping stone to something more. I’d argue it’s actually quite the opposite. Wedding photography is not only a case of turning up on the day, pointing and clicking, and sending hundreds of photos back to the couple as fast as possible. Or, it shouldn’t be.

In reality, it’s a process of trust-building and emotional interaction that allows a wedding photographer to navigate the tumult of the wedding day with sensitivity while also creating a collection of family memories for you and your family to enjoy over and over.

In fact, it’s a weighty responsibility, and carrying that responsibility shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Choosing Your Photographer

On the surface, wedding photography is expensive. Digital cameras can be relatively cheap, and a day of button-clicking doesn’t seem like hard work. It’s also a bit strange because wedding photography is usually the service you pay for 100% upfront before you’ve seen the product at all.

Wedding photography isn’t really just a service, though. It’s the whole process that leads to the creation of a time capsule of your memories that outlast anything else from the wedding day.

Choosing the right photographer for you requires finding a balance between their work, their personality, and of course, the price. The reality is that price is usually the first concern because you’ll have a budget for all the wedding expenses. However, most photographers will offer products such as albums or matted prints as optional extras and you can always come back in the months following your wedding and order something more.

My advice would be this: your price is probably going to be more or less fixed by the amount of money you have to spend. Use your time to find the photographer whose style you love most, and who you feel most comfortable with. On the day, feeling comfortable with your photographer is the absolute most important thing so don’t be afraid to ask us loads of questions and explain exactly what you want.