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?
2 comments
As a wedding photographer I saw this all the time. ALL THE TIME! Probably 75% of my clients told me they had plans to 1) loose weight 2) get in shape and/or 3) look their very best ... and here is the kicker... they all said the same words "for the wedding photos".
Why is this?
I will say my wife and I joined Orange Theory about 6 months before the wedding--yes, to get in better shape--but we found ourselves enjoying having something fitness-related to do together. It also gave us more excitement for the big day, and for the honeymoon after. A positive key for us was to not put a crazy amount of pressure on ourselves to lose specific amounts of weight. We just decided to go for it and have fun.