Why Wedding Photography is So Expensive?
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Weddings and specifically wedding photographers are expensive.
But why is that?
There are some truths and also some myths about why that’s the case, so today, we’d like to explain why it cost so much, to begin with when compared to other photography sessions like family or portraits.
First, the Most Common Myth
If you’ve read anything online about the subject, the most common myth of them all is couples mentioning that they need a photographer ‘because it’s for a wedding’.
That’s honestly a myth and the answer is going to lead us into the first reason and that is time.
The Tip of the Iceberg
See, you're hiring a wedding photographer for the time that they are working…. after the wedding.
As a couple, you only think about the time they’ll be at the wedding, not the pre-wedding, and definitely not the post-production either.
As a general rule of thumb, for every hour a photographer stays at your wedding working, you can expect a good professional to spend upwards of 3 hours editing, combing through your images, and processing.
So, while you may only need them for say 6 hours of the day, that’s an additional 18 hours in the edit bay, plus usually an hour of prep-time. In this example, that’s roughly 25 hours or more.
Now the prep is usually looked over, but it’s very important.
Making sure batteries are fully charged, lenses are cleaned, memory cards are freshly wiped and ready to go, testing the bodies, flashes, and gathering up everything, that’s usually a good hour of prep.
But, beyond the prep work, it’s the post-production time that costs the most.
You’re Also Paying for the Gear
Although you may think all camera bodies look professional, some are not. If you follow our wedding blog on a regular basis, then you will know that cameras have many different abilities, price ranges, and features.
Some are meant to learn on such as a $500 Canon Rebel T7 or Nikon d3500, while others are “workhorses” and mean to be used at events like the Sony a7iii or Canon 5dIV.
On top of the bodies, lenses can make or break a photographer’s signature look and feel, not to mention the massive cost for good ones.
Much of those costs a professional has will be passed on to you the bride and groom and thus the added costs. Good photographers can easily spend $10,000 or more. Check out this article about what it takes for us to run our wedding photo and video business, the numbers may surprise you.
In Part, Your Paying for the Experience
In some fashion, you are also paying for the client experience you get. Some couples want a professional to give them a personalized level of service, others just want a pro to come and give them good images.
Many want both and in part, the cost is passed to you too.
Some of the passed costs include:
welcome gifts
personalized service
in emails
in person during the wedding
USB or online albums you may get
fixed business costs
advertising
mailing
marketing
insurance
Experience is also in the form of the vendor themselves.
Take for example an amateur trying to turn pro in the world of wedding photography. More times, they will be much cheaper than someone with 15 years of experience in the industry for example.
You’re Also Booking Vendors Wrong
The most common problem with couples is they are listening to what others are paying for services rather than looking at what they can afford.
In fact, roughly 77% of couples book a vendor based on asking someone what they paid instead of seeing what they can truly afford.
The side effect of this is going over your wedding budget.
Just open up any Facebook wedding page and you’ll see examples of this, here’s a couple.
As I’ve stated many times on the blog, look to your wedding budget for the right answer on how much you should be spending.
If other couples you know are spending $4,500 on wedding photography that doesn’t mean you need to be in that ballpark either, besides what may be affordable to them may or may not be affordable to you.
Click here to learn the right way to seek wedding vendors online.
Photographer’s Don’t Make as Much as You Think
Say you pay $3,000 for a wedding photographer and an assistant for the 8 hour day. Seems like they’re making a lot of money for coming to the wedding for 8 hours.
In your mind, that is a whopping $375 per hour!!!
But truthfully, that’s not the case, let me dissect this example from our wedding photographer rate tool.
First, if you remember the 1:3 ratio from before, the photographer will spend roughly 24 hours time editing.
Then, the assistant, you need to pay them and you need to add additional time to edit.
For the sake of fairness, let’s say we pay the assistant a generous $50 per hour shooting or $400.
You also need to add in editing with the images they took, so add another 24 hours here.
Suddenly, that $375 her hour has dwindled to $53.57 her hour.
But, we’re not done yet.
If they are a business, they have taxes, currently, 21% in federal, then you have a business license, insurance to cover the gear if it breaks or gets damaged, and liability insurance for the venue.
Add in fixed costs like the software to edit and hardware like the camera gear and computer system that you'll pay back over time, not to mention advertising, marketing, and the like too.
These are all costs that quickly add up. Let’s be very conservative here and say that it adds up to 30% (taxes, equipment, insurances, license fees, etc) of the overall cost, seem fair?
So, you pay $3,000. 30% off the top goes to business costs (taxes, etc.), so there is $2,100 left.
They pay the assistant $400, which leaves $1,700.
That leaves the photographer with somewhere in the neighborhood of $30.35 per hour.
Just to compare, other types of people that make roughly $30 an hour include:
Real Estate Broker
Network Security Administrators
MRI Technologist
Air Traffic Controller
These are national averages, not regional, just keep that in mind.
Location of the Wedding
Finally, costs are also in part determined by where your wedding will be held.
Let me share with you a little secret that most vendors will not tell you.
Many times, it’s cheaper to hire an equally experienced vendor in a region that has less cost of living, even with a travel fee included.
I’ll give you a great example, Carole and me.
We live in Roanoke, VA, to most that live outside of Virginia, have rarely heard of Roanoke. It’s a small city with roughly 100,000 people.
The cost of living is about 23% less than the rest of the state.
What does that mean to you, the couple getting married?
Simple.
You can have your wedding in more expensive places like Washington, DC, Richmond, Raleigh, or Charlotte, then hire vendors from Roanoke, and you will still come out ahead with your wedding budget.
That’s one of the reasons why our costs are lower than most in those regions and why we do most of our outside Roanoke.
It’s just cheaper to live in my region than some of those others.
Washington DC Average Prices
Say you purchased our most expensive package at $2,999 and you have your wedding in NOVA (Northern Virginia).
Even with a $200 travel fee, you’re getting BOTH photography and videography (w 22 yrs experience) for under $3,300 whereas, in that same region, an average photographer alone will run $3,000.
See the difference?
The Cheaper Option
Listen, there are always people out in the marketplace that is cheaper and they are cheaper for various reasons.
Lack of Experience
Cheaper Technology
Lack of Experience
This comes from being new to weddings or photography. Many times a cheaper person will use cheaper gear (we’ll get to that in a moment) and in turn, they offer services that are far less than a professional.
The truth is that you get what you pay for when it comes to services.
Take me for example, I had a couple that looked at my services for a wedding video.
They decided they’d save money and hire a much cheaper person to videotape the wedding. Well, after they told me they booked the cheaper person, I decided to cover their ceremony for free to prove a point.
The guy they hired, $350 and I believe at the time I was just over $1,100.
They agreed to let me come and cover the wedding ceremony and I gave them the video at no charge.
Watch this clip.
What you are seeing is me on the left and the $350 guy on the right.
A cheap camera, VERY cheap tripod, no mic. That comes from a lack of knowledge and understanding, BUT that’s what the couple paid for on their wedding day.
I had roughly 15 years under my belt at the time and about $6,000 in gear during that ceremony.
Here, you can literally see and hear a HUGE difference in their ceremony.
Cheaper Gear
In addition to the lack of experience, some cheaper solutions will have cheaper gear. That gear is usually designed for educational purposes, to learn, practice, and gain the technical knowledge of cameras.
While there is nothing wrong with cheaper gear, it has limitations. Again, just look at the video example above.
When it comes to gear, good wedding professionals can carry $10,000-$80,000 worth of gear when they come to a standard wedding day.
A couple of disadvantages of cheaper gears can include:
Bad Images
With the lack of experience, chances are you’ll get images that are pixelated, out of focus, coloring is sometimes off, and other various issues.
Missed Images
Slower processors, slow shutters, and very limited buffers can cause the cheaper photographer to miss important shots like the first kiss for example. As a prograde camera in 2021 can get upwards of 10-20 frames per second, an older generation system like a Canon Rebel T7i can only get only 6 per second.
So during the first kiss, it’s possible to miss ‘the perfect shot’, there is a less likely chance they will capture that right moment.
