Completely under budgeted for a photographer!!!

There are lots of people that will do a disk only package for under £500. You just have to search around.

I think it's worth paying a lot for a good photographer though. We are getting a good deal because it's a friend, but full price we would have paid £750 for our tog.

Be prepared, though. If you get a cheap photographer, expect a cheap result.

Don't be scared to try and negotiate with them. I found a photograpgher that I loved but was £350 over my budget, I told him this and he brought his price down for me without compromising on timings, albums, etc.

What were you budgeting? And what is your new budget?

We were shocked by some of the prices too, but if you tell them your budget they are usually happy to compromise (sometimes quite a lot!) on the price. I have to say though that you really can tell the difference in quality between the cheaper ones and the ones that charge a more "normal price", we were thrilled when we found one that could do ours for £650, but having looked properly at the photos, we decided we'd much rather pay £1000 for a guy who's photos are totally amazing! He normally charges £1350 for the packsge but told him thatt was out of our budget and he said he'd do it for less. Don't ask, don't get!

Https://www.1and1photography.co.uk/

These are mine, they are willing to travel and their packages are low priced. Give them a call and see if they will travel to you

K

We also under-budgeted for a photographer. Luckily not by a huge amount. We decided that the photographs are going to be the most important reminder of our day, and so we moved a few things around so we could accommodate a larger budget.

Luckily my dress has come in at £425 under budget - so we've been able to put this towards our photographer.

I would sit down with your OH, and look at what you realistically want from a photographer, and what you can stretch to. As people have mentioned, it's worth discussing your budget with your photographer. Ours was really lovely in terms of the deposit, and we managed to agree a 30% deposit instead of 40%, just to save us a bit of money in this early stage.

Our photographer was Nottingham-based and without a doubt the best we had seen in the style we were after. I also think she was very reasonably priced.

Have a look at my report for an idea of her style of pictures.

Hannah is really lovely too!

https://lifelinephotography.co.uk/

Samantha Hook was mine - I thought she was brilliant.

https://samanthahook.co.uk/

I budgetted £700 but a lot of the website I've been looking at are like £1000+

Obviously I want to photography to be amazing and definately don't want to go for something 'cheap' and risk having horrible pictures

I didn't really think about haggling with a photographer. Maybe it's somthing that I'll try from now on after recieving quotes (but I find it so hard, I'm quite bad at it and tend to stumble'.

I'll have a look at your recommendations and see where I get to.

The photographer is the only this that is causing me stress right now and I'd like to get it sorted asap!

Thanks all x

I was a bit nervous at first about trying to haggle but so far I have been successful in getting discounts off quite a lot of things. I tend to do most of my communication via email as I tend to stumble too when talking to people. In my emails I go along the lines of "I really like your photographs, they're exactly what we're looking for, however your quote is a bit over our budget. Is there anything you can do to help us with this?" I try not to be too pushy, flatter them a bit, then leave the ball in their court. Once you've been successful once you will find that you'll have the confidence to try with other services.

Yeah, I think this is what I'll do futuremrsgalloway! I'm a bit of an email warrior I think!

I've sent an email to Hannah at Lifeline photography as her portfolio looked perfect and exactly the type of relaxed style I had in mind.

I've also asked her about doing a boudoir shoot for my fiance to open on the morning of the wedding. Eek!

Hopefully I can get a good deal that will suit!

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I underbudgeted too. Ended up spending £1450 on photographer and £1350 on videographer! ouch but I am 100% happy with my choice and to be honest the wedding day is costing us enough so we need to have really fab photos and a dvd to look back on. It is the one thing you keep after it all. I have seen peoples photos who have spent alot less than me and to be honest the results have been lovely. However I have seen some not so good results! Pick a person you feel comfortable around and go with your gut instinct.

I chose mine on recommendation, you will spend a lot of time with this person so you have to get on with them.

Me too!! I ended up booking mine through Groupon! Some people may not think this is a good idea however I had a really good chat with the tog before I booked it. They are a husband and wife team and had been living in Oz for the last 10 years doing wedding photography as a full time job. They had to return to th UK for personal reasons and needed to start building up some clients again. They sent me loads of pics of their weddings and I was really happy. Keep your eye out, I have seen other offers since we booked ours. Good Luck!

I was also shocked when I started looking at photographers, and quickly realised that I would have to realign my budget. For me (I love photography and it is my hobby) the photos were the most important part of the day for us, we have masses of photo's around the house of us, family and friends, so it is important to me to have photos that I like of our day. We narrowed it down to two photographers and ironically, turns out that one knows my dad and photographed a friends wedding. His costing was a little over budget (although I was trying to push OH to go for it) and he had a couple of different packages. During the first meeting, we managed to get £100 taken off, and we then negotiated a further money off, as we are getting a disk of full resolution pictures, so we do not need the proof book, so we negotiated the second deduction.

It is worth trying to negotiate, but also finding ouit if you can work with the photographer (when we met one, we realised we really could not work with them) and looking at some of their pictures online to see if they have the right style for you

Good luck

Just one of my cameras is £5299 before I attach a lens to it, but I need two in case one fails.

Then there are some who turn up with a 7D which only costs £1000

Tut, tut CG. It's the photographer that makes the image, not the camera. ?

Athough admittedly, certain levels of camera can limit ones ability...

I often use a 7D, and have to say it's a great camera with the right lenses - in fact a few of the features of the 7D have been incorporated into the 5DMk3. Sorry getting a bit techy there! It is important to have the right equipment though, and to keep this serviced & calibrated, just a rough guess but we must have about £20k of "everyday" equipment, not to mention the back up gear.

Ali x

We got a really good deal (£450) because our wedding is on a friday and at 3.30, see if you can strike a deal, for example we opted out of the printed album and that shaved another £100 off. Otherwise have a look at the local university, students of photography often advertise jobs for very cheap or free for the experience!

This is mine she's fab!!!

http://www.facebook.com/clickclickbang

Do it through email!! I'm so much more confident in haggling through email lol just say that you'd actually budgeted X amount under that and 9 times out of 10 they will do you an offer closer to what you can afford!

No one I know does this, as they've worked out what they need to make for the year and charge accordingly. Don't be surprised if it doesn't work. After all, they may get another client for the same date willing to pay the price quoted.

This is true. However, when I was looking for a TOG, I got about 4 or 5 email quotes, which I replied to say sorry but they were too high, and all of them offered me a lower price.

But maybe as I'm getting married on a Sunday, and it's a less popular day, they didn't have as much interest in this date compared to others!

As above really.

Also bear in mind that for a supplier, it's also far easier to say "No" via email too.

I'm getting married on a Saturday in August and 3 out of 5 of the TOGs I consulted with offered me some sort of discount when I asked about it. if you don't ask, you don't get!!!

This practice is totally alien to me. The only way I'd offer a different price from the original quote would be if something was taken away from the final product as I always offer the best possible price.

Hello brides!

To all of you who are on a budget...

I am a wedding photographer launching a new company and I need to build my portfolio and expand the company popularity... So I am offering really good prices in order to attract as many clients as possible in a short period of time... Once I get my portfolio build up I can start charging full price

So If any of you are interested, this is my web page: www.gianninaphotography.co.uk

One more thing... If after seeing my photos you still want more, we can arrange a Engagement Photo Session at no cost, then you can decide!

We underbudgeted too

We didnt want to go higher than £500 but then realised we werent going to get that for a full day coverage so were paying £800 for a full days coverage, 300 high res photos on a disc 26 8x10 photos and a dvd slideshow