What is behind the cost of Wedding Photography

Average Cost of a Wedding Photographer Explained

So bringing it back to the cost of all this. I am going to ignore all the items usually trotted out such as equipment, insurance, fuel etc and base it on the number of hours put into a wedding. A professional wedding photographer will spend at least a couple of hours dealing with the couple before the day including emails, meetings, sending contracts and showing previous work etc.

On the day there is usually an hours traveling time each way to and from the wedding. For a full day prep could start at 10:30am and the first dance can easily start at 10:00pm with the photographer leaving at 10:30pm. So this is 16 hours work in total which is what most people think the wedding photographer does for their fee. I wish :) 

After the day the photographer will upload and back up all the images. Then the fun begins. Typically a full day wedding will produce between 1600 - 2000 images. The first job is to bring that number down to what amount you said you would deliver.  This takes approximately 2-3 hours. Then each of the 450-500 selected images needs to be edited individually.

No matter what presets a photographer uses an image will always look better going in and individually editing it. Even if each image takes 2 minutes to edit that is another almost 14 hours work. So in total for a full day wedding a photographer will put in approximately 30 hours work. So if you divide the price of your package (After you take out albums/USB Boxes etc) and divide it by 30 you will see why wedding photography can be expensive

So with all that in mind why do some photographers charge €400 and some €4000. Well let's start with a cheap wedding photographer at about €400. It can be an option. Most photographers were there at the start of their career.

I certainly was. I was a professional photographer that worked for magazines and newspapers and corporate clients but had never done weddings and at the time.So I advertised a package outlining I had no wedding photography experience but showed the quality of other work I had done. I got a few bookings from couples that weren't going to have a photographer but took a chance. They got a budget package and I got the start of a wedding portfolio.

So don't rule it out but understand there is a risk involved.Next you have the majority of  the best Wedding Photographers that charge between €1300 and €2500 for a full day from prep until the first few dances.The difference can be in the level of experience they have. How much they are in demand and is there any extras included in the package such as a luxury wooden box for the USB key or a significant amount more images delivered etc Then there is the a the group that charge over €2000.

These can vary from a photographer that has a day job and wants to limit the amount of weddings they shoot during the year as it is a supplement to a full time job. Simple law of economics, price goes up and demand goes down and they are happy to hold out for the couples that really love their work and are happy to pay a premium for it.

In this group there are also photographers that are in very high demand with decades of experience and have worked their price up to this point and know the amount of weddings they want to shoot in a year and have delivered quality work to couples for that time and new couples are happy and confident in the service and quality they will get. In this group you will also usually find it will include a second shooter, albums and prints of some sort.

I hope that gives you some background but feel free to get in touch if you want to have a chat