To not want to pay a professional photographer for my wedding photos?!

[CocoM2017]

We are getting married next Spring and have quite a strict budget for our wedding. The one thing we haven’t sorted yet is a photographer. I have contacted a few and have had quotes from all, the most expensive being £1,900 and the cheapest coming in at £850. I only want them for the ceremony and a few hours at the reception.

This is a massive chunk out of what’s left of our already fairly modest budget (compared to a lot of weddings!) and I’m sat here tonight wondering if there’s another way to go about it.

I would really like some ‘professional’ photos from the ceremony and some at the reception venue etc but the thought of shelling out at the very least, £1k for these when they’ll probably just sit there unlocked at for the next 50 years after the initial novelty has worn off.

I was thinking about getting in touch with the local art college and seeing if any photography students would like to earn a few hundred quid? But then worry that they won’t take it seriously and will go out, get drunk the night before and not turn up, argh!

AIB tight? Should I just try and find the grand from somewhere? If you had a pro photographer, do you regret it or are you glad you forked out?

I would also say one of the perks of a professional wedding photog is they know weddings, they have experience and know what the couple likes and thinks to avoid etc. A photography student might be adept with the lens but not have the experience/knowledge to nail those dream shots.

I've just finished a 3 year BA (Hons) Photography at my local School of Arts. I worked the last two summers as a second photographer to a local wedding pro, literally for nothing, to gain experience. I am fully insured (public liability and professional indemnity) and have around £10k of camera equipment amassed over the last five years.

You're not just paying for the hours your photographer spends with you on the day, you're also paying for their experience, the wear and tear on their camera gear, their insurance and the hours and hours of experience and post-editing of your images.

That said, a bride to be contacted my course leader last year, asking for a student to photograph her wedding and I responded to the opportunity. I delivered her images over the weekend and she cried when she saw them as they far exceeded her expectations. They're a lovely addition to my portfolio and it was great to do my first solo wedding (although I did take a fellow student as a second). She paid less than £500 for us to cover the day from bridal and groom prep through to the first dance. I also did a pre-wedding shoot so that we could spend some time together and get know one another a little which helped with nerves on the actual wedding day.

If you do go down the college route, meet with your photographer beforehand. Ask to see sample images and discuss the venue with them. They need to know how to work a flash competently and the running order of an actual wedding. I'm amazed at how many young people on my course have never been to a wedding, let alone photographed one.

Why invest so much money in your wedding day but have no professional photos to treasure afterwards?

Please cut back on other things, or increase your budget - whichever is possible.

My Dad booked a ‘photographer’ who wasn’t a professional. She’d taken photos for her friends’ wedding, and overheard that my Dad was looking for a photographer and charged him a few hundred pounds to do the photography for my wedding. My Dad didn’t even check her previous work. I only found out all of this on the morning of my wedding, and was mortified!

The photos are fucking awful, and I will never get over the sadness that I feel to know I have these photos that I’m ashamed of, and will not be able to enjoy looking at them ever. It almost makes me feel like I’m not married.

My DH and I are very seriously considering renewing our wedding vows 10 after years of marriage, and hiring a professional photographer so that we have some decent ‘wedding-related’ photos. It would never be the same of course, but it would be something.

I’m currently looking at wedding dresses, as I’d never fit into my existing one now, and I will wear a huge meringue again!

Definitely shell out for a professional, and take your time choosing someone whose style you like too. I had a budget of just over £5000 for our wedding and £1000 of that went on the photographer, and another £1000 on the band, because for us they’d be the two most memorable bits - the photos store the memories for us, and your guests remember who good the band was. We had our wedding in our village hall which was about £150 to rent, the bar was free as people paid for their drinks, I DIY’d/eBayed most of the decorations... it can be done. And my dress was about £1200 in the end as well (made for me, nearly died!) Long story short, splurge on photos. I’m not photogenic and in some of mine I look like I’ve stepped out of a bridal magazine, they’re so worth the money

Argeles, might it be worth seeing if a local photographer would be able to rescue your existing photos with a re-edit? I'd recommend having a chat and finding out.

Having worked in the arts field a long time you do not pay for a couple of hours. You pay for years of experience, a professional portfolio which I assume you select because you think it's good, and many, many hours of editing after your wedding to select the very best images you would hope they caught. A photographer worth their salt will also be insured if it all goes wrong. Personally I think think that what you've been quoted is reasonable, a photographer's kit doesn't come cheap either. YABVU tbh.

I got someone local starting out for a couple hundred. To be honest getting any photographer at all is my only wedding regret. His photos weren't our sort of thing, but not through any fault of his own. Me and dh hate posed photos of ourselves, it's just not us and we don't like looking at them at all. But the candid photos our guests took I truly adore. They're photos that actually capture us and the day we had. Photos are really important to some couples and that's fine, but if they're not a priority, don't let anyone make you feel bad about that.

We had a student. He was amazing and I really appreciated that his shots weren't typical wedding pics, but more imaginative.

He had done our friends wedding though, so was a known quantity and he'd posted lots of his portfolio online so we were able to check it out fully.

If you like their work and can be reassured they'll turn up I don't think their 'status' necessarily matters. Can you make enquiries at some schools?

I completely agree with PP that your wedding photographs will endure long after many of the other, more expensive elements of the day. Big families like ours only really get together now for weddings and funerals, and our wedding pictures become more precious as the years pass and older family members inevitably die.

However - please can I sound a word of warning for all of those who mention getting a friend or family member who is a keen amateur to do your photos. It doesn’t sound like anyone on this thread has strayed into CF bridezilla territory but having been in this position myself, please be aware of what you are asking of them.

If they’re a guest, they can’t mingle, have a few drinks, or relax like everyone else. If you’ve asked them to take pictures in the evening then this means that they are on duty pretty much all day. Editing the images takes hours and hours of work, done properly. Assuming that it is their wedding gift to you, it will most likely be the most generous one that you receive, being worth hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Please be appropriately grateful!

Photos don't have to sit in a drawer unloved. You'll be so proud of them, they'll be in photo frames, Facebook...my dp uses out whole album as a rolling background to his computer at home so we see them all the time at home and keep reliving the fun. It's only a one-off buy of a moment you'll never get back again, and you'll only regret it if you get someone unprofessional and rubbish. Look at which photographers you like and just go for it!

If you have friends or family who are professionals please don't approach them and ask them to do their job for you as a gift to you. It's cheeky as AF and tight and plenty feel guilted into it but are resentful, quite rightly.

One poster on here had a family member try to rope her into this and then she wasn't invited to the fucking wedding after!

I know a couple who had a good friend (creative type) take the photos, he mingled all day
Photos were lovely, really unstaged,no cliched black& white photo of shoe/dress/quirky angle of bride
It was zero cost and they were v happy

Our photographer was lovely. We have some beautiful memories of the day. We made mini photo albums for both sets of parents and they loved them. We gave copies of the best photos to the people that were in them. We didn't really want a 'mantelpiece' picture for ourselves but our photographer insisted that we have one. We do now have it framed in our bedroom and I love it. The posed family ones were not great but much loved by older relatives and our children have enjoyed laughing at them!!

'Please be appropriately grateful!'

Please just pay them the going rate. Or better yet, don't ask. It's CF territory.

Okay, okay you’ve all put the fear of god into me now.

I’ll have a search around for some more quotes as unfortunately we just can’t afford £1,700. The person that quoted me £850 is now booked for that day 😩

A relative decided to get a cheap photographer and was devastated at the dreadful quality of the photos. We decided to get an expensive photographer and were over the moon with the photos, and they brought us a lot of pleasure for the first year or two. A few decades years later, and I doubt either of us look at the photos any more.

The photographer was the only thing that we spent a lot of money on for our wedding and we never regretted it.

I don’t know if this is feasible but do you have any colleges running photography courses near you? I wonder if they might have some students on the verge of finishing who might do the job for cheaper if they can use shots for their portfolio?

Our wedding photographer was cheap because he needed wedding photos for his portfolio to gain a professional qualification. That are as good as any other ones I've seen , if not better. He was recommended to my mil by a friend of hers. D D had hers taken by a friend who's a photography student and although all the photos are taken she's never supplied them s she keeps forgetting, it's been 2 and a half years .

We got a professional photographer who was just starting out- we found him at a wedding fair and he charged £500 as opposed to ~£1000 for a more experienced person.

We were happy with our photos- the quality was good but it was quite obvious that he wasn't used to directing people and would have to learn to be more assertive when directing group shoots! It wasn't the end of the world though.

My sister of the other hand paid about £1500 for her photographer- he was phenomenal. Her photos are beautiful and he was so friendly and really put everyone at ease while still being bossy enough to get the shots he needed.

This is one thing I wouldn't schrimp on!

It was zero cost

Only if you value that person’s time at zero!

Recommendations are key. We toyed with choosing a guy who charged £1200 plus for 6 hours and more for the full day. However a colleague recommended a photographer who had just started out and she did the full day for £600. Without a recommendation we would never have picked her but she was fab!

I’m not paying for one for mine but I’m very lucky in that my uncle is a professional photographer- he has his own studio and lectures in photography as well as holding a doctorate in the subject- who will be at the wedding taking pictures anyway so he said we might as well make use of him

We got over 700 photos on USB.

It was zero cost in terms of mula,Money,dough given we are discussing finances
I’m not costing the going rate for emotional labour nor is the bride to be

Agree with expat about not asking people you know who are professional or amateur photographers to do the photos "as a wedding present".

Unless those people are likely to be giving the couple another gift worth £700-1500, it's an unbelievably cheeky thing to ask. Most people don't understand the sheer amount of work goes into staging the photos, directing people, editing the final shots- it's just just a case of "Well they already have the camera and sure it'Ll cost them nothing."