Innovative ways to get the best wedding photographer for your money
You’ve booked a wonderful venue for your wedding. You’ve found the wedding gown of your dreams. And you’ve just seen a wedding photographer that can bring your dreams to life but you don’t have enough money left in your budget to pay them.
What are going to do?
Do you, suck it up and find a cheaper photographer or is there a way to get the best wedding photographer (the photographer you really want) without blowing the budget.
Before you start looking for cheaper alternatives, consider some of the ideas I’m proposing in this blog.
I think there is a way to get your dream wedding photographer on a smaller budget. But of course, it does come with some compromises.
You just have to decide if those compromises are worth making.
How to get the best wedding photographer when your budget is tight
40 years ago, it was fairly common for parents to cover your wedding bill.
Perhaps because more of us are getting married later in life, that’s not the case anymore. This year in the UK, around a third of couples getting married will pay for their entire weddings without any financial help from family. The remaining two thirds will split the cost with their parents, according to research by the wedding planning site Hitched.
Not surprisingly then, couples are increasingly cost-conscious when it comes to paying for services related to their wedding.
Here are my ideas for making your photography budget work harder to give you what you really want – the best wedding photographer possible.
Organise your ceremony later in the day and book short-day cover of your wedding
Even in the middle of summer, if you organise your ceremony for 3pm or later, choosing a short-day wedding package (circa. five hours) should get your photography through to your first dance.
Another benefit of organising your ceremony later in the day is that the light will be much more flattering for your photos; mums and other older relatives will also be glad of more flattering photos. And of course, it’s also likely to be cooler later in they day, particularly during the summer months.
Sure, booking half-day cover does mean you’re going to miss out on bridal or groom prep but you will get the best wedding photographer for a smaller budget.
Or at least you will as long as your photographer takes short-day bookings at the weekend. Sorry, not all do.
It doesn’t hurt to ask your photographer if they’d give you an extra hour either. I probably would if you asked really nicely.
Ask all of your parents to split the cost of the photography between them
If you do find that your dream photographer doesn’t accept short-day bookings at the weekend during the summer months but you’ve still got your heart set on the best wedding photographer money can buy, one way of funding it could be to ask your parents (on both sides) to share the cost of the photography between them.
Or, if that’s too much to ask, why not suggest they share the cost with you; effectively they’d be topping up your photography budget to make your budget go further. And hopefully stretch it to the photographer you really want.
Crowdfund your wedding photography as a gift from all your guests
Of course if your parents are already paying for half the wedding, the last option probably isn’t going to wash. Another option for financing the best wedding photographer (rather than a cheap alternative) could be to crowdfund your wedding photographer as a gift from guests. Guests will pay what they can afford and you can get your dream wedding album.
Most wedding photographers ask for a small booking fee upfront to secure the date but the balance isn’t due until closer to the wedding date so you don’t have to ask for wedding gifts too far in advance.
You just need to be fairly confident, you’ll raise sufficient funds to cover the final bill.
Scale back on flowers, cake and drinks
Ninety-nine percent of your guests literally won’t notice what you’ve spent on your wedding flowers or your cake so scaling them back to free up a bit more cash to pay for the best wedding photographer could be an option.
True, guests might notice if you don’t pay for any drinks at all – I’m not suggesting that –cash bars are becoming pretty normal for the bulk of alcohol consumption at twenty-first century weddings so I’m sure no one would think any less of you, if you only paid for a drinks reception after the ceremony and wine during the wedding breakfast and speeches.
Book a wedding shoot at your venue instead
Okay. You don’t want to crowdfund the best wedding photographer as a gift, it’s too much money to ask from the bank of mum and dad, and scaling back on anything is not going to cut the mustard.
How about not having a photographer at all on your wedding day but getting dressed up again a week or two later with your wedding party (on a weekday) and doing it all over again as a three-hour photoshoot at your venue.
I know, it’s not ideal – you want to see the real story of your wedding – but I can’t tell you the number of times, brides have said, ‘I wish we could do it all over again’. Well, now you can. Sort of. And this time, you know what to do, no one’s judging you and there’s not all the pressure that comes with a real wedding day.
If you booked a wedding shoot with me, it would cost you around £600 for the photo shoot, including processing, a web gallery for sharing and print ready files as a digital download.
Yes, you won’t have a professional photographer on the day – that’s something you’d have to think about very carefully. As an alternative to a photographer on the day, you could give your guests disposable cameras and use an app like Burner or The Guest to curate and share the results.
Have a late Autumn or Winter wedding
Here’s my penultimate suggestion – you could book an out-of-season wedding. When you organise an out of season wedding, i.e., between November and March, it’s going to be cheaper all round.
Also colder, and possibly wet but it may make the difference between getting the best wedding photographer possible and choosing a budget option instead. If you’d like to know more about my off-peak prices, use my availability checker and pop in a few details about your day.
Have a weekday wedding
My last suggestion for making the best wedding photographer more affordable is to opt for a weekday wedding. Well Monday to Thursday. In fact, much like off-season weddings, getting married between Monday and Thursday tends to make everything cheaper about your wedding. Because most wedding don’t take place between Monday and Thursday, photographers don’t always have a published price for them, so be sure to ask the question – don’t just assume that weekend prices apply.
Obviously, you do have to ask guests to take time off work to attend your wedding but you would for a more expensive Friday wedding as well so hopefully that’s academic.
So, that’s it. Seven ways you can make the best wedding photographer more accessible on a limited budget.
Of course, this won’t be the answer for everyone but I hope it’s given you something to think about and shown you there may be another way to get the champagne wedding photography you want on your beer budget.
I’m a wedding photographer based on the Buckinghamshire, Berks, Oxfordshire border. I cover weddings in Bucks, Oxford and Berkshire, and some beyond. You find examples of my work in Bucks by visiting my Buckinghamshire wedding photography page.
For information on my best wedding photography packages, visit my wedding photography pricing page.
You can see more examples of my work in Oxford, Berks and other locations here as a wedding photographer.