I have been asked this so many times... does the wedding industry inflate prices when they hear it's a wedding?
Here is my honest answer (as a former wedding photographer)... NO. Did I charge more for a wedding than a 50th birthday party or a family portrait session? Yes, absolutely. I charged A LOT more for a wedding.
Was I taking advantage of the emotional sell? Absolutely not.
The main reasons I charged more for a wedding were: the unseen amount of work involved in the 12+ months leading up to the wedding, the skill level needed on the day, the INTENSE pressure to create perfect "portfolio level work" no matter what the reality of the situation- but mostly it is to compensate for the time AFTER the wedding in post production.
Little known fact about wedding photography - the real job is sitting at a computer editing photos. Photographers spend many hours behind the computer carefully selecting and editing photos. They make adjustments, crop, and adjust colors to ensure each image it's best. Don't forget the time it takes for batching, renaming, importing, exporting and uploading the photos and preparing them for delivery.
Do you think this justifies why photographers charge more for weddings than for other types of shoots?
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In my years photographing weddings, the one time that couples always said they loved was when I took them out for the sunset photo. That was normally right in the middle of dinner service so they could easily slip away without anyone noticing. They have not stopped all day, often they hardly even talked to each other without a ton of people around.
Walking them outside for this 15 minutes was a breath of fresh air... literally! They would always hold hands and take a deep breath. I would say "This is IT.. you are living your wedding day right this minute... how does it feel?"
GOOSEBUMPS!!! Every single time, we all would get goosebumps and they would take a minute to be present.
After the wedding I often heard from my couples that it was one of their favorite parts of the day (not taking the photo haha, just being almost alone for a few minutes)