Finding an affordable wedding photographer in the Roanoke Valley is like shooting fish in a barrel, it’s easy and you stumble across a mountain of newbies and those offering such cheap rates, you wonder in the back of your head if it’s too good to be true.

Well, most times is it too good to be true because you get what you pay for in the wedding industry.

Today, Carole and I are going to explain what the real meaning of ‘affordable’ is, signs to look out for when booking a wedding photographer and how best to negotiate with vendors like us too.

What’s Affordable in Roanoke?

First, you need to understand that the word ‘affordable’ is loosely defined as the meaning is different to different couples getting married.

Since every couple has a different budget for vendors, depending on what their wedding budget tool says, its going to be different.

What your asking when you say something like “In search of an affordable wedding photographer here in Roanoke” is saying, I don’t know what to be charged so drop your business and tell me.

Say for example you have a budget in mind of $1,500.

Well, to some couples thats affordable, to some it’s expensive and for a select few, thats super cheap.

So before you go about trying to find one of us that is ‘affordable’, change your strategy.

First, if you don’t know what you’re budget is, use this calculator we developed. It’s bases on your overall wedding cost and it will help give you a range that you can start to work with.

Once you have that range, if you turn to social media for help, ask it in this way instead.

“ISO a wedding photographer for my May 3rd, 2021 wedding at The Kyle House. Our budget is $1,100-$1,500.”

See what I did there?

I gave enough information to professionals such as myself that it quickly narrowed down who can fulfill the wedding via a few key pieces of information, your date and seeing if we as vendors have that date open, the location and a range to work with.

In this example, my real number is $1,300 to work with, but having a range will help give you a bit of flexibility when it comes to helping narrow your search.

What to Look For when Finding a Wedding Photographer?

Here in the Roanoke Valley, wedding photography is BIG business, almost a $3 million dollar a year industry in fact.

As with any industry out there, you will find a low, medium and high-end marketplace so let’s start with that for today’s blog.

Low-End or Cheap Wedding Photographers

These are a group of photographers with little experience within the wedding marketplace and gear tends to be mostly on the low-end. Her,e you’ll be able to find great deals normally under $1,000 although you will not get those with lots of experience.

While there is nothing wrong with this, expect low results.

Let me give you an example.

I filmed a wedding with a new wedding photographer in the Roanoke area and well, it was a disaster.

She showed up late, she didn’t know how to take charge of the wedding party to pose for images and she used a $500 Canon Rebel T7. The images were so grainy and dark, the couple could not print them out or see them well and the photographer has to wind up refunding their money back.

Not all newbies are like that, in fact, some are upcoming and aspiring photographers and do good work, but you’re rolling the dice when you hire in this section of the wedding photographer industry.

Mid-range Wedding Photographers

Most of you that purchase a wedding photographer will fall into this category. In south-western Virginia, Roanoke and Lynchburg, you’ll find a range from about $1,200 to $2,900.

Here, you’ll find a variety of styled shooting with various mid-range to high-end DSLR and mirrorless cameras, lenses and equipment.

You’ll find that most of this range knows exactly how to go about taking great images, knowing how to pose couples, knows what to look for, and can take charge pretty well when needed.

They also tend to communicate well with their wedding videographer counterparts and work together well too.

High-End Wedding Photographers

There are very few high-end wedding photographers in our region however those that generally use very high-end medium format cameras ranging easily into the tens of thousands for the bodies alone, they charge more than $3,000 upwards into the $10,000+ mark for wedding photography by itself.

These are professionals that have been on a national circuit, in many national magazines and television programs, and are highly rated in what they do. Here, you will have complete peace of mind that every image they produce will be the best it can truly be and you will be given a top-notch experience with that person.

How to best book a wedding photographer in Roanoke?

By far, the best thing you can do is to meet with them in person. Many vendors will either meet over coffee at a place like Mill Mountain coffee, Panera Bread or even Starbucks as several work out of their home.

Others may have a small studio where you could meet and a few select will need at the venue you’re getting married at.

In either case, it’s a good idea to meet in person and if you can’t because of distance, talk over the phone or video chat if you can.

Why?

Because you want to see if the person whom you’re going to hire will have a good personality and be a good fit for your wedding day in the process.

Additionally, it gives us vendors the opportunity to meet to see if you’re a fun couple to take on as well, so it’s a win-win situation for both.

Next, we recommend that you try to negotiate price.

Yes, and now a lot of my counterparts reading this are going to get angry and say things like “why are you trying to belittle our industry?”.

Truth be told, we’re not here for them, we’re hear for couples like you and yes, you CAN negotiate on price with everyone.

One secret however, if you read my blogs on a regular, you know a wedding planner is more likely to get you better rates with wedding vendors than if you do it yourself.

Anyway, you should always take the price they have and counterbalance it with what they offer.

Even if the vendor says no to a discount or a value-added service tossed in, it’s worth a shot at asking. It’s better to ask and see if companies offer some sort of discount, even if something small, like 5%.

Always make sure the photographer has a written contract that’s signed by both parties too.

It helps protect you in the event something happens to the vendor and they leave town and trust me it’s happened in our region before and just recently too.

Take Nesslerod Bed and Breakfast, it was a wedding venue that closed first of 2020, leaving many wedding couples out thousands of dollars in deposits.

Things that you want in the contract should include:

• Details of what he or she will be doing

• The overall cost of their services and/or any products

• Signed by both parties

• The date of the wedding, location, times and other important details

• Cancellation clauses or rescheduled clauses

While there are some other things to consider these are by far the most important in a contract.

They are important for a couple of reasons, first, they lay out what the person is going to do, their tasks and what you expect with the results.

Second, in case you need to seek action because the contract wasn’t fulfilled, you have some leg to stand on legally should you need to go that route.

It’s highly unlikely that you will ever need to go that route, but just like any big ticket item,

How many wedding photographers are in the Roanoke area?

That’s a great question and to turn to those numbers we need to look at a little bit of data, so I went to the Salem library to get my first piece of data, the number of photographers in the area in 1986.

I found the Roanoke, Salem, and Vinton City Directory for that year and went to the business section.

Well, turns out there were only 22 photographers in our region that year, so I went and found a bit newer book from 1998.

The 1998 book showed a larger number of photographers at 43.

So, then I turned to The Wedding Report, an annual guide to more than 400 markets and 30,000 locations in the United States.

I purchased the premium membership which gives me a LOT of detailed data on just about every single part of the wedding industry and within Roanoke and Roanoke County.

That data shows that in 2008, the region had almost doubled with 91 photographers in the region.

Fast forwarding to some newer data the report showed an overwhelming tick in photographers to 173!

When you compare that to other wedding vendors, it’s the most over-saturated part of the industry, even more so than wedding venues in fact!

That’s great if you’re a couple getting married because you have a lot of people to choose from. Chances are, you’ll find the right person within your wedding budget pretty easily.

One great question that we get from the data is why so many?

Truth be told it has to do with the technology and its affordability of it.

In 1986 and even in 1998, DSLR cameras were film-based and they cost a LOT of money back then to have, not including the cost of the film and the processing.

In 2008, cameras became more digital in nature, although poor quality compared to today’s standards, over the years gear, has become much more tangible with the costs.

In 2020 for example, you can purchase a Canon 5D Mark Iv for about $2,500 and a good prime lens for another $2,000. Dropping $5,000 today gets you a lot of bang for the buck. 10 or even 15 years ago, $5,000 would have bought you very little.

Even the $500 models ‘look’ like they’re professional and to the untrained eye, they can seem just as expensive.

No matter what type of photographer you search for, make sure they are within your wedding budget, don’t spend more than you should just because you feel like you need to either, we see that mistake a lot these days and the truth is that many others can provide the same level of quality without having to stretch out that budget figure.

Trust us, you’ll be thanking us in the end.

We’d like to know your thoughts, drop a comment below, we’re always happy to hear from people getting married!