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How Much to Budget for a Wedding Photographer
As a guide it is recommended that you allocate about 10% of your overall budget for the photographer. With weddings typically costing over £16,000 that gives about £1,600 or more for photography. For this sort of budget you can expect to get an experienced professional wedding photographer and a reasonable package that may well include an album, prints, and a CD or DVD slideshow. You may need to allow for more than this if for example you would like two photographers to cover the day, a photographer in high demand or the best quality albums.
If your budget is less than this, you may not be able to get a complete package or you may need to find a photographer that is relatively new or not a full time professional. Other options for reducing your budget include a midweek wedding and a winter wedding.
As with all photographers make sure you have a good look at their work, view complete weddings wherever possible and make sure the style and service meets your needs.
To many people a budget of around £1,600 may sound like a lot of money. Therefore let's take a quick look at what makes up the bill. To start with you pay for experience. A calm photographer with personality will add to your day. They are likely to be able to help soothe any nerves and build a great rapport with you and your guests. The right photographer helps make the day fun. Wedding photography should never be seen as a chore, but an exciting record of the day.
On top of this experience helps them to take those great shots of your day. Nowadays just about everyone has a digital camera, but there is no doubt that a true professional gets by far the best results.
A photographer also has equipment overheads. I would always expect a wedding photographer to arrive with a spare camera, lenses, batteries, flash and memory cards. In fact just about everything they may use on the day will require good quality back up. Just imagine the downside of anyone turning up without a spare camera!
Before a wedding the photographer may visit locations to check out the best places for the photographs. For the modern wedding so much time is spent after the wedding is finished. A photographer may spend days at a computer ensuring the photographs are perfect. Many wedding photographers will take in excess of 1000 photos at a wedding. Therefore it is not surprising that it takes a substantial amount of time to process them afterwards. A further large chunk of time is taken up putting the wedding album together.
With the amount of work that needs to be done, equipment cots, the years spent building knowledge and creating their signature style it is not surprising that you need to spend a sensible amount of money for good quality wedding photography. Therefore if someone does offer to photograph your wedding for £500 compromises have to be made somewhere.
What I would like is for you to turn up on your wedding day with total confidence that your wedding photographer is the complete professional and can deliver your dream photographs.
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