Price of weddings

This is more of a small rant. lol

So I am not niave or I like to think I am not. I knew weddings was expensive... but COME ON. I just sent in forms for quotes  for photographers and I wanted to strangle everyone of them. Most are asking for 1000 upwards. 

This on top of the crazy prices for everything else I seen. I feel like I should go into the wedding business because obvs I am in the wrong career field.

From what I've heard, £1,000 is a pretty standard price for a wedding photographer... a quick Google search suggests that you should budget £1,000, but that the average price for the photographer is about £1,200 and some charge upwards of £2,000.

A friend of mine is planning her wedding and she said she found that only the cheap/not so good photographers advertise their prices on their websites... so she got an idea of price online, but then found out that the good photographers were much more expensive than she was expecting!

I'm sure you can get cheaper photographers than that, but then again, their photos may not be as good as more expensive ones, so I guess it just depends on your budget and how high a priority the photos are for you.

"oh, you are looking for wedding photos?  Let me just clear way all these other brochures and get out my special wedding packages that cost three times as much."

We got married for $45. My dress was £120. Our flowers were $50.  He had his suit.  Went crazy with the rings and took a honeymoon that I thought I could only dream about.  All for the cost of an average British wedding!

Hi Ksand... I am trying to decide now how big of a thing photos are for me.  These quotes are in USD sorry did specify . The one I really want is 2500 USD and I am sitting here trying to figure out is it worth it.

I am like your friend. No one would state prices on their sites so I literally had no idea I was walking into quotes for 1250, 1500, 2500  and so forth. Just really shocked me a bit.

"oh, you are looking for wedding photos?  Let me just clear way all these other brochures and get out my special wedding packages that cost three times as much."

lol I feel like they are doing this for everything.... let me throw away the brooches for food and get out the wedding package for 3 times as much... oh you want wedding shoes that will be 2 times the cost. on and on

lol I feel like they are doing this for everything.... let me throw away the brooches for food and get out the wedding package for 3 times as much... oh you want wedding shoes that will be 2 times the cost. on and on

Because they are! 

We saved some money by getting married on a work day and we only had the photographer for the 'elopement package' which meant she took photos for 3 hours (we mostly wanted portraits and family photos). $800 including a website with photos for a year, CDs and rights to all photos. Ask if the photographer will do only a few hours etc...?

Speaking as someone is is close personal friends with wedding photographers, the good ones really put the work into your photos. It's not just about the time they spend on the day, it's about the editing time after. We got about 800 beautifully edited photos from our all day coverage plus a photo booth, and I do t even want to think about how much time our friends spent editing them. £1k is quite cheap for all day coverage, especially if you've got 2 people working.


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We did the budget wedding thing and ended up hiring a photographer who was new to the business.  I met her through UKY and she took fantastic photos!  I really lucked out.

It is possible to get married for less, it's just a matter of what you are willing to compromise on.  My dress was from ebay, his suit from Overstock, flowers purchased in the train station as we passed through, transport was the tube, we feed 22 people at a local restaurant, cake from the grocery store and picked up earlier in the day.  It was miles different from a friend's wedding where her florist and baker delivered everything to venue staff in a carefully organised schedule while the bride relaxed and drank champagne.  Their wedding was also 20x the price of ours.

There are lots of start up photographers who are working another full-time job.  They don't require the same fees as professional photographer but the results will be different.  Ours just gave us images on a CD, not heavily processed, and no photograph album, etc.  If you want something like that, prices may well be substantially less.

Ours just gave us images on a CD, not heavily processed, and no photograph album, etc.  If you want something like that, prices may well be substantially less.

I got married here in the US, but we had a similar experience with our photographer and we were satisfied. Yeah, we could've splurged (and I kind of wanted to), but in the end, we focused the money on what was more important to us. Plus, we also chose a pretty all-inclusive wedding package from the venue. I'm not sure if they have similar packages in the UK, but the venue we had here rolled the costs together (venue, photographer, cake, catering, etc. Flowers could have been part of it, but I found them too expensive so I used an independent florist and they were supposed to charge me a fee for that, but ended up waiving it because she didn't have to enter the venue since I nixed the idea of floral centerpieces). Definitely there are ways to make weddings more affordable, but it usually comes down to making decisions to have or not have things and asking yourself why you're having those things (many times it's because someone else - society or the parents or guests - expect them). At least, that was my experience.