Wedding Photography Prices

Article by David Day Wedding Photography, Nottingham

The cost of wedding photography varies greatly. Right now, I am writing in 2009. Typical package prices have taken a dip since 2007/8, along with overall wedding costs. It’s a good time to be getting married.

At the bottom end, there are inexperienced photographers doing it for free or just covering their bare-minimum overheads, just to get some portfolio images. Of course, there is no guarantee that they will provide a useful record of the day or anything remotely artistic. They could cause problems with the running of the day and organising large groups portraits is unlikely to occur smoothly.

At the other extreme there are the very small number of wedding photographers whose client base consists of celebrities and the rich and the famous. The figures charged by this small number of photographers is comparable to the entire wedding budget for the day of a lifetime, large get together on a fancy estate of a couple on professional incomes, who have had a lot of help from their parents.

In the middle there lies the majority, with photography packages typically ranging from 400 to £4000.

Much of the £400 end of things is covered by part-timers these days but not exclusively. These packages typically include a short day for the photographer, who will just cover the basics and provide a simple album. Equipment and experience levels tend to be lower at this end but it is not a certainty. There are photographers out there who really know what they are doing and have chosen this as their market place, especially if they find a full day’s photography too exhausting. It can be a nice way to wind-down a career. It can also work well for both photographer and client, to have small packages available for mid-week, small winter weddings or just a last-minute booking. Coverage tends to be rather akin to a portrait session.

After £550 packages can be found for longer day’s coverage and gradually, as one moves up the scale, albums become better quality, with more pictures and a greater level of service, as one would expect from more mature businesses. Packages over £1000 will often incorporate a 2nd photographer. This can really add value. Work can be divided by the photographers. This can help with the arrangement of groups, as well as offering coverage from different viewpoints.

Very large packages will often include more than one photographer and a single album. Multiple albums and framed prints may well be included in the price, so that other family members have their own record of events. Albums and printing also effect price. In the past, English albums were amongst the cheaper options but buying British is quite expensive right now, with large English book-bound and hand-made albums being particularly expensive, for what they are. Of course, if it’s what you want, you may well choose to find the money; after all it’s a one-off, not to be repeated (no silly comments please).

There are also some great albums available from other areas of the World. Traditional, hand-made and book-bound albums have been joined by printed books, where assembly and printing techniques vary considerably. Design is sometimes done in-house by the photographer and sometimes passed-on to the book printers or another party. When printed books first came onto the market, they were incredibly expensive. Some of these expensive products still exist and have not got any cheaper. Expect to be in the £4k+ area but there are new products in the market-place now, using cheaper assembly and printing processes, along with much better design software, which makes printed books the most popular style of album now, with some photographers offering small printed books, perhaps a 9”x6” and a half day of photography for as little as £400.