I have an ex-student photographer doing ours and i've looked at some of her work esp on facebook and they look great.

Welcome and congratulations on your engagement :)

I would say yes go for it but make sure you check out their previous work and check they have insurance just in case :) xxx

our photographer is a sister of a friend and she'd said she'd do our photos in exchange for a drink but we've set aside some money in the budget to get her a thank you present

Brill - glad you guys seem to think it's a good idea! Next question is where on earth do you find one..?? Apart from the local colleges, which I'll be ringing around come the start of term in September. Any ideas on that one?

Our photographer isn't professional as such but his work is just as good as the professionals. He is a friend of ours and does all our car meeting pics and to be honest Neil and I will feel so much more comfortable with him which will hopefully show in our wedding photos. xxx

its a good idea if you have a smaller budget.

I have found a student who hasn't built yet a portfolio, once I set the date I am going to meet and discuss what I want and see what she'd charge. Do I need to sign a contract with her to make sure she will turn up or can take her word for it?

I'd be a bit careful about having a student be in sole charge of shooting your wedding.

Part of the unique skill of being a wedding photographer is knowing where and when great shots are going to happen.
There of course is also the question of understanding wedding etiquette, when and where it is and isn't appropriate to take pictures.

Add to that the fact that once the day is over, the pictures are the only record of your wedding day and you have, and you have a lot of responsibility placed on the photographers shoulders.

All these things take time to learn.

Even after 15 years I still get nervous when driving to a wedding - but that's a good thing as I check and double check everything to make sure nothing can go wrong.

Speaking as an ex student photographer myself, I know that even if you are the most brilliant photographer, the pressure on the day to deliver will be unlike anything they will have experience, which is why most students start out shooting as a second shooter.


@lysblanc -

Yes, you most certainly do need to sign a contract with them. Do you really want to wonder if your student is actually going to turn up on the day?

If they don't have a contract available - go and find one online, there are plenty out there. Give it to them.


I think ultimately it depends on how much you value the photography on the day.
In the main I'd say that it's not something you want to take a chance on as the pictures will be the only record of your wedding in years to come.

HTH

Alex

My cousin does photography as a hobby and so he will be doing ours, we tend to like natural photos anyway.

We are getting our live band from the college I went to as my singing teacher is now head of music and she wont settle for anything less than perfection on timings and notes etc so I trust that whomever she chooses for our band is more than qualified and expereinced to play for a wedding. We even get to request that they use their lessons to practise as they can use our wedding as part of their coursework it just means there's an extra camera about recording their music so they can use that to play back for their course work.

Have also just started looking into a college for the cake too.

The bay of e is great for bargain hunting or so im told.

My mum is making our invites so that wont cost much maybe 10 quid for all the bits and bobs

Try having silk flowers to cut costs.

Look for dresses in bridal shops before deciding what to have (see my post about finding the one without all the hassle of rudeness or expense disappointment)

You will find some great bargain tips on here hun go to catagories at the top and search for bargians there are quite a few threads

thanks girls for advice @ Alex, I have in fact found a few contracts already when asking for questions, and if she refuses to sign anything and refuses to give me name of a tutor from school I will not count on her.

my friend does amazing shots but not of weddings tho is trying to branch out into them. She will offer the services for free so you just pay for photies. Will travel across uk provided long journeys she gets travel expenses. If interested, make a comment on my wall

Alex: I find £850 a rip-off because all I get for that is a disc with photos on; effectively, I am paying £100 an hour for photos and I find that excessive to say the least; I appreciate DLSRs don't come cheap, I have one myself, but I find it difficult to work out where they get £100 an hour from in all honesty. I imagine many photoshop their images afterward; my gripe with this being by OH is a graphic designer and works with photoshop regularly and can do a MUCH better job than most photographers I've seen...

In terms of the shots themselves, I am talking about rated, reputable photographers here; maybe I am unduly fussy but as of yet, I am struggling to find anyone whose work I actually like, too many photographers now seem to do these overly arty-farty, photo-shopped shots which really aren't my cup of tea at all, and TBH, my OH has taken better photos than many I've looked at (and I am NOT looking at dodgy photographers I can assure you, these are people who are supposed to be very good).

If I have to, I'll pay £850, but I really hope I can find someone cheaper as so far, I've not seen anyone who I'd feel happy paying £850 to for a CD of images that I then have to oay to get printed; I've had photo shoots done abroad that have set me back just £100 for 300 photos, all way better than most wedding photos I've seen so far.. Obv it's cheaper abroad, but still...

@barbie86

Thanks for your POV, I find it always helps when chatting about the cost of wedding photography to get the brides POV clear.

On the face of it you look at a price - in this case £850 and say, 'hold on, isn't that rather steep for 8hours work? It's over £100 an hour - they must be making a fortune!'

First thing to understand is that wedding photographers obviously don't earn £100ph every working hour of the week - if we did I'd be writing to you from my luxury yacht and sipping Crystal instead of a studio and a mug of lukewarm coffee :D
I find a lot of people don't make that distinction - they just see £100ph and multiply it by a 45hr working week.

Generally speaking a wedding will involve around 40/45 hours work from my side of the camera (the day itself, travelling to meet with you before the wedding and the wedding itself, post production, album design, print ordering, showing the images to your and your husband, putting them online for your guest viewing, etc etc..)

So there is more to it in hourly terms than simply turning up for 8 hours on the day and taking some pictures. Roughly each wedding equals about a weeks work.

Out of this £850 the photographer needs to cover the following:

Cost of actually getting the job in the first place (advertising, promotional materials, websites, etc..) - a good rule of thumb is that for every £1 brought in from jobs costs about 30p to generate.

Then there are other associated costs with just being in business (insurance, travel, equipment replacement fund, computers, software, telephone, NI contributions, camera servicing, ISP fees, online software to allow you to order prints over the net, etc..)

While in this case you're talking about a package with DVD, lets assume you got prints (As Faeth would like some prints with her £850 :D) - so there is the cost of the prints themselves (and a 3p print from a supermarket is nowhere close to the quality of a print you'll get from a proper professional lab), or the cost of a quality album (I won't name them, but there is a manufacturer whose COST price for some albums is in excess of £600)

So all this has to come out of that £850 before your photographer can think about paying the tax man, and then paying himself.
And also lets not forget that it's not constant every weekend work - Most togs shoot between 30-35 weddings a year, not 52 (i.e one every weekend)

I know on the face of it a lot of B2B's think that photography just involves a camera and just involves the day itself - but as you can see here there is far more to it than that for those that run ourselves as a proper legitimate business. I'd love it if every penny I charge went into my own pocket - but alas, that isn't how the world works.


I hope this makes sense and doesn't come across as a 'my way or the highway' type post.
There is a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to photography - and I just want to help people realise that there is more to what people charge you than simply popping down the shops, buying a £300 Canon and setting up as a 'wedding photographer' and spending a few hours with you on a Saturday.

Someone once did a proper breakdown of costs and it worked out that a photographer shooting 30 weddings a year at
£800 a time was earning under minimum wage.

HTH
Alex