Wedding Day Regrets!?
You know what the majority of brides wished they had spent more money on at their wedding day??
It wasn’t flowers or cake or even a hairstylist.
CHEAP PHOTOGRAPHY. That’s what.
A recent article on Reddit and picked up the Daily Fail (intentional) listed the things the newlyweds made mistakes about their wedding day.
Some moaned about children attending, a poor DJ, guests taking photo’s on their phones, they even moaned about their bridesmaids.
But the single most popular thing they wish they had done differently was PHOTOGRAPHY.
They wished they had gone with the photographer who they got on with and who’s photo’s they liked as opposed to the cheapest.
Now here’s the thing. We all have a budget. Everybody’s circumstances are different. I get that.
But what price memories?
The big article that the Daily Mail ran this week was about a female photographer that they said gave her couple sub standard photo’s and also only 15, that she turned up late, that she messed about in a photo booth etc etc. That she was terrible.
Well the Daily Mail didn’t really do any type of investigation into this. It now transpires that the lady in question was on time, took 296 photo’s for them and had been praised by the couple on Facebook and in texts and emails. Now this lady in question was a photography student. She did her best. She gave the couple exactly what they paid for. They paid her £500.
Now work it out.
I spend on average 9 hours at a wedding. Then there’s the consultation (1.5hrs). The pre-wedding shoot (2 hrs). Editing (20 hrs). Let’s just say that with travel nearly all my weddings are 30/35 hrs.
Then say my price was £1250.00 that puts me on £35.00 an hour. That’s pretty good. Then take out my travel costs, my USBs and packaging. My insurance, my public liability. My costs for equipment and training and we are dropping down to sub £30.00. I don’t know how long the lady took to edit but she was there for 7 hours on the day. Say she was doing 30 hrs per wedding.
She’s on £16.00 per hour. In 2013 the average hourly rate was £13.60 so she was roughly on the UK average. The word there is AVERAGE. If you want average then pay average.
The average (yes, average) cost of a UK wedding photographer is £1500.00. Now that’s a lot of money I get that. You only have to google wedding photographers and look at their prices to see huge differences in price. So why pay extra? It’s all about expectation for me. If you hire a £350 photographer then you will almost certainly get £350 photographs. Thats nothing against £350.00 photographers . .its against expectation.
I am friends with a lot of (brilliant) photographers. People who charge upwards of £4000 per wedding. . . And no that doesn’t include any album!!
You know what too, if I was to get married again (to Mrs D of course) I would pay that £4000 in a heartbeat. The Gabe McClintocks, Marshal Gray, A Fistful of Bolts will get amazing photographs. They will shoot the wedding in the style that I love and make me look like a rock star in the process. And then when all the cake is long gone and the dress packed away I will look at this beautiful picture that I have had framed and mounted on the wall and remember that day when I looked awesome.
I can’t tell you what colour tie backs I had on our chairs or even if what the flower arrangements were!! But I would have the most amazing photo’s of that most amazing of days.
Let’s stop unfairly blaming some photographers for their “average” photo’s when you pay average money.
If your getting married in a small ceremony in London stop looking at pictures of rolling hillsides, with models posed in the mist. If your getting married in a barn or a wedding venue stop looking at brides posed on a castle ramparts. Its all about realistic expectations. A good photographer will make you look awesome, like a rock star. They will know how to make you stand so that you’re at your very best in the situation that you are getting married. That is experience and training and time. Its not the fault of the £350.00 photographer that they don’t have that.
Let’s start to look at the bigger picture. You want awesome photo’s. You want to look like a model and a rock star. Start at the very best price you can afford. Look around. Do not settle for average on your photo’s. You will 100% regret it after just like all those couples on Reddit.
As my Dad used to say “If it looks like a horse, walks like a horse why would you think it’s a zebra”
You now know what most couples wish they had spent more money on for their wedding day?? 😉
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