My one hope in sharing this post is this: I want to humbly share why wedding photographers charge what they do without tearing ANYONE down. I want to say all of this with so much grace and also explain that I TOTALLY understand budgets. Guys, I just got married in 2017… I know it’s HARD! I totally get it! There is nothing wrong with not having the budget to hire a certain photographer!

If you’re planning a wedding, I am not wanting to put you down – at ALL – for having a low budget or not being able to invest in any certain wedding photographer. I get it. Honestly, that is totally and completely FINE and I understand! Really, I do!! If you email me and I’m out of budget, I will happily send you on to some amazing photographers I know who are in budget! :) Even if you don’t become my client, I see every inquiry as an opportunity to serve. I’ve done this many times! I’m sincerely not offended when a couple doesn’t book because of pricing.

Yes, it is a huge investment. However, I think it’s one that you won’t regret making if you invest in someone who is amazing at what they do… coming from someone who is a photographer + a recent bride! I TREASURE my own wedding day photographs so much, and it was definitely the best (and biggest) investment of our wedding day! We made wedding photos a priority for our wedding and invested a lot compared to our overall budget (we invested nearly 1/3rd of our entire wedding budget on photography), but I don’t regret that one bit! It’s completely fine if photography isn’t a priority – maybe your DJ or florals or venue is more of a priority and that’s OKAY. Do what’s best for you and your fiancé!

This is totally directed at anyone who is genuinely curious as to why (experienced and thriving) wedding photographers have the price tag they do… all of the blood, sweat, tears, and costs that go into running one wedding photography business, and how we don’t really make 100% of what you’re paying us, and when you break it down, it’s not easy money! My hope is this blog post gives you some insight and understanding you didn’t have before! :)

The Client Process

• The couple fills out my contact form on my website or emails me directly. YAY! I email them back with a custom response and attach my investment guide, typically within 24 hours as promised when they fill out the form!
• We arrange an initial wedding consultation, if they email back interested! Double yay!!
• We hold the consultation at my home office. This typically lasts 1 hour and requires 1-2 hours of prep work (cleaning + getting ready), because I have couples over to my home (unless they opt for a video call, then it’s only 30-45 minutes of prep work)!
• If the couple decides to book after the consultation, I have to send over their proposal (contract + invoice) via Honeybook, a client management software I use online.
• After they sign the contract + pay their retainer on their invoice, I send over the print release, model releases, and links to my resources I provide my couples online
• I create their custom photography timeline based on what we chatted about during their consultation, as well as schedule their engagement session
• I send them their wedding guide with a hand written note via snail mail!
• I add them on Facebook & Instagram, then add them to my Facebook group
• Before their engagement session, I have to get out all of my gear and clean my lenses, charge batteries, make sure all the right gear are in the right bag, that I have my backup gear ready, and make sure I have enough SD cards for their session.
• On the day of their session, I typically arrive 30-45 minutes early to scout locations to ensure I find all of the best spots… especially if it’s a location I’ve never shot at before!
• We typically spend at least 1.5 hours shooting their engagement session!
• I spend 1-2 hours backing up all of their photos on two different external hard drives right after I get home, to ensure the photos are not lost!
• I pick a couple of sneak peeks to import into Lightroom, edit, export, then download on my iPhone to share with my couple within a few days after their session!
• After all of the photos are done uploading to the hard drives, I go through and cull the session (pick out the ones I want to keep). After I cull the ones I want to keep, I cull the ones I want to edit first for their blog post (the best of the best).
• I craft their blog post within one week by editing all of the blog post photos and writing their blog post (with a lengthy process I won’t explain here!)
• Within the next week or so, I edit the entire gallery of 150-300 photographs from their engagement session! *I do have someone help me edit my entire galleries, so I usually don’t do this part anymore!
• After I’m done editing, I export the entire gallery from Lightroom, then upload to an online gallery software called Pixieset. This is how the couple gets their images! Uploading the photos usually takes 1-2 hours for engagement photos, and several hours for weddings. Once it’s done uploading, I send a link to the gallery to my couple via email!
• Within a couple weeks after their engagement session, I follow up to see what their favorite poses were/what they want me to focus on for their wedding!
• Three months before their wedding, I send out an online wedding questionnaire that finalizes their timeline, and gives me any other info I should know for their big day!! Once they fill it out, we go back and forth about any finalized details I need to know + finalizing their timeline.
• Before the wedding day, I get out all of my gear and equipment I’ll need. I go through a whole checklist that includes making sure all of my gear is there and in the right bags, charging batteries for my camera body and flashes, having enough blank SD cards to use, cleaning all of my lenses, writing out a check to my second photographer, making sure my apple watch is charging, importing their timeline onto my calendar on my apple watch, importing their family formals photo list onto my apple watch, printing out two copies of their wedding timeline + questionnaire, texting the bride to share how OH MY GOSH EXCITED I am for their wedding, and texting my second shooter to make sure they’re good to go for the next day!
• The day of the wedding, I wake up a few hours before I have to leave. This is to ensure I have enough time to relax, pray, re-check I have all my gear, pack up my car, eat a good breakfast, then arrive at the wedding venue an hour early to scope locations/meet the bridal party/get started on bridal details early.
• Shoot the wedding. This entails a lot in and of itself, but I’ll let you imagine everything that goes into that the day-of! :) Typically I am booked to be there for 8-10 hours!
• If I haven’t already during the reception, as soon as I get home, I immediately start backing up my photos onto 2 hard drives. I edit a few sneak peeks to post within the next day! This means I usually stay up for another 2 hours after I get home.
• Like the engagement session, I craft a blog post for the wedding day, usually within 1 week of the wedding! WOO!
• I upload their entire wedding gallery to Pixieset after it’s fully edited!
• If the couple ordered an ALBUM, there are several more steps during this process. This includes sending over their album cover color questionnaire, creating and sending over their album designs after they receive their entire wedding gallery, finalizing their designs, and then ordering the album.
• And BOOM! We’re DONE!

There it is, all laid out! That’s all for one couple. Multiply that by 20-25 (depending on how many couples I have booked), and that’s the average work load of wedding photographers, just on the client side of things! I’ve never gone through and figured out exactly how many hours I spend with each couple, but without editing and shooting, I would guess it’s easily at least 20-25 hours!

Daily Tasks

Alright, so besides serving each of our clients with the above process, we also have a huge list of things that are a part of our day-to-day work that need to be done weekly, monthly, or yearly. Here are a few things I can think of off the top of my head:

• Social media management (creating daily/weekly content for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc)
• Answer emails (sometimes the inbox can get a little cray-zy!!) I typically respond to emails at least 1-2 times per day, and spend at least 1-2 hours per day doing this task!
• Website updates (portfolio or otherwise. I can easily spend hours trying to update my website!)
• Writing non-session related blog posts (tips & tricks, personal, travel, etc)
• Network with other vendors
• Attend events to promote our businesses, like bridal shows and photography meet-ups
• Marketing our business through a variety of ways
• Creating marketing materials (business cards, sample albums, etc)
• Invest time into educating ourselves (workshops, online videos, mentoring, etc) This takes hours in itself per course/workshop/etc!
• Keeping up with client workflows (the process I laid out above? I use Honeybook to keep up with when I need to do all of those things, so I log in every couple of days to see what needs to be done next)
• Bookkeeping
• Taxes (sales tax + income tax)
• Track business mileage for tax time

The list is endless, but these are a few big things that happen on the daily.

Expenses

Okay, so expenses with wedding photography are really in two broad categories: fixed and variable (does this take you back to your accounting or finance class? Ha!) Fixed are things that need to be paid for regardless of how many weddings we photograph, and variable costs are associated with every wedding we shoot.

Fixed costs (yearly fees):

• Online galleries (like Pixieset, which is what I use. $400/year)
• Insurance ($750/year)
• Monthly fee to use Lightroom & Photoshop ($30/month)
• Web hosting + domain hosting ($400/year)
• Accountant fees (around $300/year)
• Client management software (like 17Hats or Honeybook, $400/year)
• Random fees for different software/programs like Two Bright Lights (to submit weddings for publication), ActiveCampaign (email list service), DropBox (I use this to transfer files to and from my photo editor). Each of these are typically $100-200/year
• Repairing & professionally cleaning camera equipment ($100-300/repair or cleaning)
• Office supplies
• Online marketing fees like The Knot or Wedding Wire (if we’ve signed up for them)

For every wedding we book, these are the additional costs we incur:

Costs per wedding:

• Second shooter or assistant fees (typically $200-350/wedding)
• Photo editor fees (For the wedding and engagement session; if you’re like me and pay to have someone help you edit, so you’re not spending 20+ hours editing per wedding. I typically spend $250-400 per couple on editing fees)
• Client gifts (I typically gift my couples things like a bridal magazine with wedding planning tips & tricks, a marriage book, calligraphy prints, gift prints/canvases, etc. I typically spend about $150 in gifts per client, I like to think of this like my marketing budget because it fosters the relationship I have with them!)
• Gas to and from the wedding and engagement session
• Cost of albums, if they were ordered in the collection (a minimum of $350+ per album)
• Shipping for products and gifts

There’s one more big cost that we also have to take into account: buying all of the camera gear! When starting out, you usually have nothing and have to build it up! This is the typical bag of most wedding photographers:

Camera Equipment:

• Full frame camera body (typically range from $1,500-3,500 per body, and a back-up is necessary)
• Lenses (I have 8 lenses and all are in the $800-$1800 range)
• SD cards (I have 25+ of these and they are $50-70/each)
• Hard drives ($120/each, I currently have 11)
• Extra camera batteries
• Camera bags
• Flashes
• Light stands
• Flash modifiers
• Tripod
• Higher quality laptop for editing accuracy and speed

Those are pretty much the basics!! And we are typically upgrading/replacing our camera gear at least every 2-3 years to ensure great quality and reliability!

Taxes

• I pay 30% in taxes in the income I earn after expenses (which means around 15-20% of my gross income)

At the end of the day, I am usually profiting (money I get to spend for my personal finances that is not a write off) anywhere from 50-70% of what I charge for my services after expenses + taxes, from what I am earning photographing weddings alone (totally depends on where I’ve been at in my business/how much I’m charging/how many weddings & sessions I decided to book). This totally fluctuates and is different for every photographer, but just as an estimate!

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There ya go!! There’s a glimpse into the life of a wedding photographer and everything that goes into a wedding photography business! :)

All of this isn’t to say that our jobs are JUST hard and expensive to run… while that’s true, it’s truly such a career that brings so much JOY. It’s so INCREDIBLY rewarding, which is why so many of us love serving couples SO MUCH!! I truly believe that photographers either LOVE weddings or hate them. There’s not much in-between because it does take a LOT of hustle to build a business that is sustainable.

But in my opinion, it’s totally WORTH IT. I am incredibly grateful for what I do and I wouldn’t have it any other way!