Why Do Wedding Photographers Cost So Much?!!

You may think the wedding market is an industry filled with overly inflated costs. I remember feeling this way when I went wedding cake tasting. An elaborate birthday cake for 50 people costs about $50, but my wedding cake for 50 cost a cool $5,000. A venue is half the price if you're hosting a birthday party instead of a wedding. A wedding photographer's base price is as much as a downpayment on a small car. I feel your pain. I've been there!

The truth is, weddings cost us more.

Hours:

I always tell my clients that about 1/8th of my time is actually spent at the wedding photographing, the rest is editing time, emails, coordination, travel, etc. That means if you have a 10 hour wedding, I'll be working on it for around 80 hours. That's 2 weeks of full-time work you'll be employing me for.

Equipment:

When photographers shoot, say a birthday party, we take from 300-500 images, max. Of course, raw images take up many gigabytes of computer space, back up space, and DVDs. But multiply that number by 10 and that's how many photos we take each wedding. It's like 10 birthday parties. 3,000-5,000 images for each wedding. And well, that costs us a lot more computer space, and computer space costs money. We also require bigger memory cards, the highest-end lenses, carriers, and even uniforms. The base cost of being a fine-art photographer, a family photographer, a headshot photographer, etc is much, much less than a wedding photographer. 

Insurance:

Insurance is astronomical for wedding vendors. Why? Because we get sued. Seriously. Think about it: this is a couple's one big day.  You don't get a re-shoot, and you have one chance to make it right. We shot a wedding once where the cake delivery company stuck a 4 tier wedding cake their delivery van, and expected it to survive a curvy mountain road all by itself. When they opened the back, the cake was all over the place, not even recognizable (um, duh). Luckily the bride had a wedding coordinator who didn't even tell her it happened, called the bakery, and pulled a miracle out of her pocket. But that bakery could've been sued for everything they were worth if not for that savvy wedding coordinator. So, our insurance is pricey.

Location:
Unfortunately, your wedding vendors will cost more in certain states. I always feel like I have to apologize for charging my couples sales tax, but it's one of those things that just has to be done. For instance, we live in downtown Los Angeles and the taxes here in California? We basically pay 5 separate rounds of taxes. It's much more affordable all around to live & work in other states.

Value:
You're paying for expertise, not just hours, or number of images. This is something less quantifiable, but I would say absolutely the most important element to the discussion. I like to think of it like this: Why would you ever pay $200 for a pair of Citizen jeans when you can get a pair from the Gap for 50 bucks? Because the Citizen's are higher quality, the style is current, and they make your ass look like a million bucks. It's the same with wedding photography. There will always be a cheaper photographer. Heck, your uncle has a camera, right? But you're paying for expertise, art, and style, and for photos that will last forever.

If you find a wedding photographer whose style is what you want, just book them. Seriously. Just call them up, and book them because if you save a few hundred or even thousand dollars booking a less experienced "budget" wedding photographer, your photos may not come out well, or even not at all. Photography is an art form, and not everyone does it in the particular way that speaks to you. Wedding photos are what you will have for generations to come, what you show your children and grandchildren. It's how you relive your memories every year on your anniversary. No, you don't mess with your wedding photos. Wedding Photography is the one place you shouldn't cut corners.

Don't get me wrong, we always try to fit our packages within a client's budget to the best of our ability. But it always cracks me up when people call us up and say, "We don't want to pay your fee, we just want, like, 3-5 photographs for our website," or "How much would 50-60 photographs be of our wedding?" The truth is, we never show up to a party and only shoot 3-5 photographs. We shoot many, many, more, then we end up with 3-5 winners and send them to you.  And it's expensive because we're really good at what we do, and you're paying for our expertise, not just for hours, and not just for products.



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Megan Blaine
Blaine Photography
323-893-2345