a little bit devastated

I agree. I should know, I live there too.

My package is the only package my togs do. When we booked 2 years ago, it was £950 and their work is amazing, plus they know my venue inside out and backwards. I notice now the package for new bookings is £1100. They were the cheapest we found with photos we were happy with. Plus they're lovely. I'm also South.

I thought you lived in North London? That doesn't count as southern to me! Well, not really anyway.

South London/Surrey borders although getting married in the New Forest.

Ah I see. Ok that does count as southern!

Probably heading a bit OT but as you asked, I am originally from Somerset, which is where most of my friends/family are, and obviously she's the same for Surrey, and with me living in London I'm closer to her geographically but we both looked at a number of local venues and those we liked were way beyond our budget, and those we could afford were unable to accommodate what we wanted.

We looked further afield, and I knew a hotel (part of a chain of 4) in the New Forest that I've used for work conferences in the past, and we had a look at their wedding brochure online and it seemed very much the sort of thing we were looking for within the budget we were looking for, plus a beautiful location thrown in free. Looking it up on a map, it's almost exactly half way between Somerset and London, and very easy to get to for everyone with main roads apart from the last 5 miles which is a B road.

We went to visit, looked at two of their hotels and couldn't decide - there were pros and cons to both, the one with the nicer grounds had a smaller (and long/thin) function room which wouldn't have worked so well for our plans, so we took her parents down to visit both and they agreed with us that the larger of the two venues, although it meant the overall cost would have been less as we'd have had less guests, was more suited to what we wanted, so we booked it.

There was not much between the two venues in all honesty (same pricing on everything, the only real difference being function room capacity) but having visited our chosen venue several times we are confident that we have made the right decision for us.

Thats probably my fault then, yes I meant top package, thats what i meant when I said the 2 things that are the most important bits to me are the photos and the rings, theyre the bits Im spending the most on.

No there are some that charge alot less but the packages are also less than desirable. I am heading for the whole or middle shebang ? when it comes to the photos depending on albums etc xxx

As long as you and your h2b get the package you want, that's the main thing. It's pointless comparing budgets really because we all have different circumstances and expectations from our big day, and 'good value' or 'a bargain' to one is ridiculously expensive to another.

Phew ... Thanks Nicola ?

We have packages starting sub £1k, and we have some well over £1k - thats not to say that our standard varies depending on which package you chose!

Maybe its a location thing, but there are quite a few photographers up north who have packages starting sub £1k.

Hello

I'll be happy to help if you like my portfolio www.ohlalaweddings.com

Thanks,

Gaelle

Hi Luna_12

Simon has had a few problems sadly due to the Printing side of the business and not the weddings.

As you know he is a fantastic photographer and is making sure that every client is getting all that is due to them and he is still photographing all booked weddings.

The people who have posted on the forums tend to only talk about the negative things and have failed to mention when they got their album and that when they collected it they were over the moon with it.

People go out of business every day and their customers loose out. Simon and I have made sure this will not happen. Any albums that are outstanding are due to waiting for the clients to come back to us with any changes in the album design.

We have photographed many wedding clients from the same family and I am sure simon would have loved to do your wedding.

Depends what you want. Wasn't mad on a lot of the more expensive photographers round our way - too arty for me, lots of the black and white with one bit of colour shots which I don't really like. Admittedly some of the cheaper ones' shots on their websites didn't appeal either (generally lighting) but we found one for £350 whose work we liked (including some well composed and lit shots of a dark, panelled dimly lit venue) - remains to be seen if the final result works, but we certainly preferred his work to lots of togs 10 times the price - the really expensive ones seem to be obsessed by things we defined as overly fussy, gimmicky and clever for the sake of being clever.

Price vs quality

As AJ says price is not the guarantee of quality

however...

Someone once told me, dont pay to little, and dont pay too much

Too little:

With photographers, too little means that there will be no backup equipment, no backup plan, poor quality equipment, and often many corners cut. Yes you might fall lucky, and find a photographer with at least 2 Nikon D3S's and a bevvie of Pro-grade Nikon lenses, and a portable lighting set-up, and a car, with satnav, and a huge tank full of petrol, and the creative skills to use all of that equipment, and then an editing suite, with decent colour calibrated screens, but at sub £500, however... unless the guy is a lottery winner, and does things for the love of it, it is unlikely

Too much:

Yes there are chancers out there with crappy gear, no backup plan, no backup kit, that want to charge top dollar prices, additionally, there are guys out there who are so full of their own artistic vision and skills that they charge way too much for what is usually a mediocre job

The right amount:

Then there are the full time professionals, who invest in kit, who are artistic, skilled, work like mental people and deliver a superb product and have a brilliant attitude

The question is - what are these guys worth...It certainly isnt a few hundred quid, and it isnt ten grand either. What you need to figure is that if you want a full time professional, who will deliver a great product, spend all week dealing with your wedding - what is the right price? What salary would you like your hubby 2 be earn a year if he was never around at the weekend, and spent all week in front of a computer.. Come up with a figure, divide it by about 40, multiply it by about 2 (to deal with tax and equipment, and then you will come up with a fair price

lets say you think £20,000 (in the bank) is a fair wage - then you need to expect to pay about 20,000 x 2 / 40 = £1000 and that would mean that when the photographer has paid for tax, insurance, equipment, cars & everything else, he is left with £1666 in the bank each month

On a personal note, we have seen photographers come and go. We have been doing this for years, shot countless weddings, and know that unless you charge enough to: live off, buy gear, plan for the future, pay all of the bills - then basically, you go out of business. In addition to that, quality work and effort needs to be paid for. Like anything else - a very talented person is worth more than a lesser talented one. Additionally, I have spent thousands in the last weeks replacing equipment before it fails .. If I were charging too little, this would not be possible

Hiya Luna,

I am in the north west, I have found a photographer who does everything we want, he edits them if we would like (for no extra cost) and he does a free 'engagement shoot' or 'family shoot' so you can test his work out -- (he is wanting to build his portfolio and would like you to tell people about his work) I looked at the things he has done and seeing as the main things in our budget are venue and dress and rings, my budget for photos was 600, i found a few that would do that for us, then i spoke to him - he charges £150 for all day from getting ready till after first dance, and for an extra 50 pound he will make you an album up - with that you get all images on a cd/dvd or usb if you want his info let me know xx

Blimey.

Lets look at my last engagement shoot & a real wedding and plug some real numbers in

Engagement shoot: 1/2 day out of office = 4.5 hours + £20 in petrol

And the wedding I shot last Sat... I left the house at 9.30am, started shooting at 10.30, first dance was at 9.30pm (i stayed a lot later than that) Add an hour for the drive that's: 13 hours + 4.5 hours = 17.5 out of office hours (driving or shooting). Lets say I am superhuman and can edit all of those photographs in 1 working day (I cant, but lets pretend) that's another 8 hours = 25.5 hours Add another £20 for petrol, that leaves in the pot £110 that works out at £5.36 per hour, based on real wedding figures and superhuman image editing times

On the odd occasion I get a second shooter in I pay them a lot more than £150 (quite a lot more than that), and I pay thier expenses too!, and the second shooter doesnt have to do any image editing after the wedding either, and the image editing takes a lot longer than the shoot itself

Even when someone is starting out, they need to respect themselves enough to at least cover costs and earn more than minimum wage. If I had no experience, and no portfolio, and I was considering charging £150 for all day, it would be a no-brainier to go and second shoot for someone. If a photographer has the skills and confidence to go shoot a wedding on their own, then they ought to command a reasonable price for it, portfolio or not

£50 wont cover the cost price for a basic good quality acid free album, let alone the prints to go in them. These are wedding photographs, a life time (and beyond) visual memento of your wedding day. You don't want to open the album in 20 years time and see yellow faded photographs, falling off the page

I admire people wanting something on a budget, and I understand wholeheartedly that when money is tight, it just is, however I would rather get 12 shots done properly, than 1000 shots done poorly, and the same applies to the album. If money was tight, I would opt for a handful of prints, printed professionally in archival paper. At least in that way, what ever you have will last the test of time. What worries me is that by design, there is no money in the pot to buy basic but decent quality products

There is another thing to consider when booking a photographer with a unsustainable low price... Good gear costs a fortune (If I went to replace all my essential kit I take with me to a wedding, you wouldn't get much change from £10,000 (and that wouldn't be replacing all of the kit either, that would get the bare minimum I needed)

Alas cheaper gear wears out and dies quicker, and that's risky. While a lot of people use the gear they had when they only had a hobby, they don't realise that a wedding (especially a all day wedding shoot shot by a relativity inexperienced photographer) can easily rack up 3000 clicks on the shutter. It wont take many weddings, or just some bad luck to find out that the camera just dies. Pro grade cameras cost more and last a LOT longer (and even with Pro-Grade kit, we have backups)

Try www.arj-photo.co.uk/

He did wedding photos for a couple we know recently and the photos were amazing! Reasonably priced too.

I cant imagine what sort of quality you would get for £150....

WSS! Unless they are an up and coming tog looking to build a portfolio. I would be very wary though.

Ours is £950 and she is fab, Samantha Brown Photography based in liverpool

I wouldnt take the risk. You can never get you wedding day back again and what if the photos are crap?

I have a friend who did a photography course at uni and actively did work taking publicity photos for fashion and products magazines and after finishing uni he frequently offers to have photo shoots for couples or families for free and gives them the rights to the pictures and one free hard copy so that he can encourage people to spread the word. He does do weddings too. www.ap-photo.co.uk/

Yes thats fair enough, but he is starting up, he has done 3 weddings so far, I have seen his work and seen the things he did for other weddings, I also know one of the weddings he did, and they where made up, he offered the 'family shoot' and said we could decide after that, he does have all the equipment and yes he said we could name our price and we could do our own albums if we wanted too, he said ideally he'd want at least 150, where giving him 400. Im sure he will do just a good as job no matter how much he gets paid he has a passion for doing something, and from what i have seen and heard he does it well.

Most of our local photographers started their weekend prices at around £1,000. I definitely don't want prep shots - I'm planning to mooch down the street (past the church) to the hairdressers and mooch back when sorted. Plus I'm using a common or garden room at the hotel, so there won't really be space. Photos wise I want arriving at church, vows etc as allowed, first kiss, leaving, family/friend group shots and various drinks reception shots, plus various shots of bridal party crossing the road from church to reception. I don't want arty "these are my shoes" shots, largely because I'm going to get a pair of cheapish silver shoes and I don't really care about shoes. The couply shots are planned to take place the day after (hopefully) up on Dartmoor, as that's the place that means most to us. The more expensive 'togs didn't offer anything other than full day stuff.

As for why ours is cheap - he's a semi pro (part time) and makes the majority of his living doing something completely unrelated to photography, but we were impressed by the quality of his work (OH is more of a photography geek than me - half the pictures in our house are his photos!). Also we're not getting an album - we get our photos electronically - and will probably design ourselves a storybook on photobox (we enjoyed doing calenders, especially OH, and he objected to paying £££ for something he enjoys and wants to do himself). Getting photos electronically so we can make our own album was looking massively expensive until we found our photographer. OH discussed kit, and our tog has an oldish (not old) camera which has fewer megapixels than some, but the quality of optics is good (can't remember what the name is, OH had heard of though). We wouldn't be able to do a massive poster size blow up of any of the pics (and tbh would hate looking at one!) but we know that OH's camera with fewer mega pixels is fine blown up beyond the size we want for our wedding pics

£150 is extremely cheap.......just make sure that even though he is starting out that he has public liability and professional indemnity insurance.

At the end of the day, we all had to start somewhere and if he feels that £150 makes it worth it to him, and you are happy with his images and have seen FULL weddings that he has shot - not just a few shots from each, then go for it. But definitely look into if he has insurance should anything go wrong, and check his contingency regarding if he's ill, if his kit fails, etc.

Photo's were really important to us too... I've seen plenty of togs since I booked mine that have really lovely photo's for less than we have paid but we fell in love with our togs pics and no one else quite fit the bill after that so I am happy with the 2200 we paid, for this we get 10 hours 2 togs him and his assistant, editing and photo's on a disc, we had an engagment shoot with him that cost an extra 270 but as I hate my photo taken it was important I felt comfortable of the day and this allowed me to do that! Got some very cool pics too ? Plus he's done a lot of weddings at our venue and so i've been able to see alot of his work there and it's awesome!

I see someone is advertising me as a free wedding photographer :p As much as I'd love to offer such a package, I am actually a fashion and lifestyle photographer and shoot a limited number of weddings a year. My rates for the limited number I do shoot, start at £1050.00.

Sadly, its not financially viable to offer such a service for nothing!

Alexander, http://www.ap-photo.co.uk

Hi Luna,

You are out of my area I'm afraid, but I do know a couple of fantastic photographers very close to you. Drop me an email via my website link below, and I will send you their details.

Best wishes,

Simon.

Hi luna

i am getting married in the mesrsey side area and have a fantastic photographer, his name is matthew rycraft. He did a freind of mine and came recommended i went for a consultaion and loved his work and booked him there and then. his packages start from £849, have a look

www.matthewrycraft.co.uk

Hey all thankyou very much for your replies. We actually managed to get hold of Simon and sort something out. His business hasnt gone under but he has relocated. As for the previous debate about cost etc, as I and others have said Im prepared to pay that bit extra, our photographs are going to make up so many memories and theyre precious too us. Biggest part of our budget is rings and tog lol. Thank you for all the offers of help and suggestions xxxx