It’s so bonkers to film a wedding.

Is there a wedding markup? Are wedding vendors just greedy jerks who want to fleece? You know, we are generally honest, hardworking, creative people who want to be paid fairly for our time. Yes.

You’re not crazy. There’s absolutely Wedding market and Libby Dollar. I’ve shot weddings in 26 states. So this is not regional commentary at all.

I would say wedding markup is definitely not a thing.

Is there a wedding markup on services? Kind of. But not without good explanation.

Listen, a wedding is an entirely different event than, say, like a birthday party or baby shower. If you were to lie to a vendor to get a cheaper rate and that vendor showed up and it was something else, that vendor could leave because they are not prepared.

You have to be prepared to film a wedding. The timelines are so different, the pressure is different. You have to bring different equipment. It’s so bonkers to film a wedding. To give you an example, the cinematographers of Hollywood and the TV industry don’t want to touch weddings because these are live events with extremely tight turnarounds. And you kind of have to be a little crazy to like doing them because you can’t really redo an event.

So everything has to be perfect, perfect the first time out. That’s a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. And not only that, but you have to change your entire personal life beforehand. You have to make sure you don’t get hurt. You have to make sure that your limbs work. I mean, it’s just crazy things you have to do.

So, yeah, there’s a markup.

I’m a wedding photographer based in Montana. And yeah, I can definitely say, you know, when I photograph an event, it’s going to be cheaper than a wedding. But the reason behind this is the amount of effort that goes into a normal event is going to be just substantially less on my part. For example, I’m shooting a bar mitzvah this weekend.

They hired me for a couple hours. I talked to them once on the phone. I’m going to show up. I’m going to do the pictures. I’ll edit, get them to. I’m pretty easy. We’re, on the other hand, with a wedding that is months and months of preparation. Usually there’s like maybe an engagement shoot. There’s an album design looking at just a massively long day now.

There’s just a lot more work that goes into it. Even just things down to coordinating a schedule, bringing on additional help normal. Then I can show up, I can do it by myself. But a wedding is going to take more people from my team. I’m probably going to have to hire out an editor as well. Just with the amount of weddings that I’m doing in a summer and the quality that needs to come with the images, just, you know, weddings are one of those once in a lifetime things and they have to be done right.

Whether it’s explicitly stated or not. Weddings are expected to be perfect. Getting close to perfect requires more and more and more time, money, preparation, expertise, assistants, all this kind of stuff. If I’m going to photograph family photos on a Wednesday evening at a park and I get sick or something happens with my family, I can reschedule. If the weather’s terrible, if my camera breaks, I can reschedule.

We can do it again. You can’t do a wedding again. You can’t just mess up an hour worth of photos. Oh, heck, I had the wrong settings on. No, you are expected for all of ten, 12, 14 hours that you’re there to produce evidence of every single thing that happens in the most artistic way that can grow with your portfolio And all of this kind of stuff. Other events that are as do or die, that have a firm date, that have high expectations, are price the same as weddings, events that can be rescheduled or are lower priority or have lower expectations.

Those are the things that get a discount.