Please Help - Photography Budget!

I didnt want to spend more than £500, and i wasnt interested in having any bridal preparation photos.

But I want quality as they are one of the few things in the day that do actually last forever, so I understand that my budget may need to be raised.

It is shocking to find some photographers charging £1500 for their basic package as that is a huge part of my budget and I could never stretch to that.

1. Didn't want to spend more than £1k but were willing to sacrifice peripherals for that (not having anything other than digital images, which will have been edited, of course). 2. Confidence that he could deliver a shot worthy of a GQ advert.

We managed to get a special package deal for £500 - which covers all day attendance, an album and a disc of photos - all we needed. Normally £850.

The thing we found most important? Getting on well with the photographer. We met him at a wedding show where there were 6 photographers; we viewed them all, they were all more or less the same quality to our untrained eye, with varying prices. One of the photographers was downright creepy (think of the childrens entertainer from Hi-de-Hi), another took one look at us and sidestepped to talk to the couple behind us (rude git) and the others seemed to just be interested in getting us to sign up rather than finding out what we wanted. But the guy we chose took time to chat to us, ask about our venue (which we hadn't confirmed at that time), our plans, checked his diary on our proposed dates to see if he was free, and said he would honour his show offer if we booked in the next few weeks, and when we rang him a few days later once we'd confirmed date/venue, he remembered us - and that meant a lot out of the 600 plus couples he probably saw on the day.

Again, we aren't interested in the "getting ready" photos as it'll be chaotic enough up there, we don't want any gimmicky shots (bridal party all jumping, bride in distance looking like she's standing on the groom's hand etc) or anything photoshopped within an inch of its life.

After a small amount of initial research we decided on a budget of £1000, for which we wanted all images on CD. We weren't looking for any prints or albums within that price, wanting to decide after the wedding what, if anything, we wanted.

The "must-have" element was that we wanted to love the photos (not too many formals... I hate them!). I also wanted to feel comfortable with the photographer as I really dislike people taking lots of photos of me and being in my face.

My budget was considerably larger than my husbands!!!! He thought £500 was too expensive, I wanted to spend £1500!!!

We have very different opinions when it comes to artistic flair and the photographer was the source of many a "discussion"!

I wanted arty stylish magazine shoot style photos, something to be really proud of.

I wish I had shopped around more and got someone that I really raved about, our photos are lovely, but our after wedding photos are better!!!

Initially my budget was 1k but when I shopped around and found a reputable local TOG who's work was good enough for us and didn't charge the earth I booked him. 650 pounds for cd album and pictures from prep at venue to 1st dance and provision of white screen, props and unlimited pictures for guests for 2 hours for 350 pounds extra.

We had a budget of £1000, we are spending £650, but will probably spend a couple of hundred on a professional album after the big day so it will work out pretty much th eplanned budget.

I had no interest in bridal prep photos, as I think I'll be stressed enough trying to get ready without having to pose for photos.

I really wanted the evning to be captured, so we are having the TOG up until the end of the 3rd dance so that a few of the evening guests will be in the photos.

Again, I think wedding package prices are outrageous, but also appreciate that the photos will last forever, so they need to be good.

I'm a keen (but rubbish!) amateur photographer, my sister is a professional photographer but isn't doing my photos as I want her to enjoy the day and she will be a bridesmaid. The photos are one of the most important aspects of my day. I'd rather cut down on many other things to have an amazing photographer. I might not be able to take a good photo myself but I have quite a critical eye for them, so I know what I'm looking for. I know from experience, that people's memory of a wedding can be quite short, so I want the photos to look back on. My budget is probably alot higher than anyone elses - I've set it to £3k, but it really is that important to me.

I've also assisted my sister at weddings, and I know how much goes into it, and the work involved after the wedding. When you realise the time spent on pre wedding venue research, time at the wedding, sorting through hundreds of shots, post processing, album design etc, you soon realise that £1k is a bargain!

Initially our budget was £0 as a very good friend was going to do our photos for free as her present to us. Sadly she had to drop out because we moved our wedding date and it clashed with one of her exhibitions, so instead we booked a friend of mine from uni for £450. As it is, he had to drop out at the last minute and now we have another friend standing in!

Most important thing for us when we had to start considering using a professional TOG was flexibility on prices. Everything about our wedding has been driven by budget constraints so we've had to be very clever about every aspect to make sure we're getting the best value. I'm not interested in the prestige factor of booking a particular name, nor are we bothered about having albums printed up for us - we'd rather put them together ourselves. But we did want the freedom to be able to reprint photos at our leisure, and that seemed to be something that was problematic for a lot of professional photographers - or at least very expensive for us to arrange!

The deal we've struck with our TOG now is that he will be with us all day and take loads of photos, which we'll then go through and pick out which ones to edit and keep. He'll put them on a disc for us to reprint as and when we want to, and he'll also use as many of them as he wants for his portfolio. It's kept our costs down, he has the freedom to use the images as he wants - everyone's happy!

Hi

our photographer was the first person we booked after provisionally looking at the venue! our venue gave us a brouchure with a load of photogrpahers in the reccommended suppliers, i came home and looked on their website

i liked his website i could see lots of examples of his work and even better i had a price list, we went to see him and he was brilliant easy to talk to didn't do a hard push and just talked for a while. so we booked there and then! we have paid £2000 for all day, two togs, Italian story book 4 parent albums, 15 mini albums, images of cd to print off, slideshow in evening

i like his blog so i can keep up to date with the pictures he uses and can think of what i like and what i dont!

Another thing that I remembered reading other replies - flexibility was another important factor.

One of the photographers we spoke to gave us his price list with essentially a 'these are my packages, take it or leave it' attitude. We dont' want to spend £400 on an italian leather album to keep them in; the album isn't that important to us when a £25 one from Ebay will be pefectly adequate. Our photographer was very much "this is the basic package - ie all day attendance" and then you can add the extras you want on top of that, and if all we wanted was a CD of pictures to do our own thing with then that's fine, as I'm sure you are aware much of the cost of photography is 'post production' time, and why clog up hours of his time doing little effects to pictures when I have Photoshop and are perfectly capable of doing most of that sort of thing myself.

By paying a professional you expect shots to be in focus, white balanced and contrasted properly etc when you receive them, so in my mind they should be ready to print anyway.

Im payig £300 fore the cd and he'll prin about 5 pics off for me- i told him i was on a tight budget and he had a deal o aswell- he'll start the pics of at the church to the reception but not all day- i hate posing for pics so i told him i hardly want posed pics that i want a lot of natural ones

Initially we sort of set a budget at £1000 a bit more if we felt it was justified and started looking and then family friends of ours reminded us about their son who is studying photography and has his own business of taking pictures of babies/kids and families and contracts with several schools and to contact him as he wants to branch out into wedding photography this year.

I contacted him and he came around and he gave us no bulls**t and said that as he was still studying he would do bridal prep/groom prep, ceremony, wedding breakfast and evening (basically be there as long as we wanted) he would charge us £300 and then he would produce/edit all the images on to disc ready for us to print off and keep etc.

He offered us a pre-shoot so we could see and get a feel of him in action and absolutely loved what he captured. He listened to our brief and was getting as excited as we were.

So for us we got a tog for a very reasonable cost and a disc of the images (after being edited) to keep and no fancy photobooks etc as I believe we can put our own storyboard together and give it more character and print off which ones and have a disc full to do with as we please.

We didn't want to pay more than £1000 and wanted someone where the style of the pictures felt "right". That is a rubbish way of putting it but it's difficult to explain - we looked at a lot of tog's websites and the style of teh photography just didn't suit us; maybe it was too posed, or too cheesy, or there was just something about it we weren't keen on. The ones where we "clicked" with the image style were the ones we contacted. We too were happy to go without an album if it meant finding the right tog for us; we get a CD of edited images plus a web gallery for £900.

Getting on with them was massively important as I hate having my photo taken so need to be able to feel comfortable with the person who will be spending all day sticking a camera in my face.

Oh, perhaps I should say that our overall wedding budget is £10k so that's why we didn't want to spend more than £1000 on photography - perhaps if our budget had been bigger, we would have upped the amount we were willing to spend.

I had no preconceptions as to what a tog would cost so set no budget, Found someone we liked, and liked the work of and got him down a bit on what he said the normal cost would be.

We've ended up spending £1,450 which includes:

100 photo story book album

2 x large canvases

2 x parents copies of the story book (A5)

2 x parent albums (20 photos of their choice)

Disc of all 850 edited photos with printing rights

And on the day our tog was with me at 8 in the morning for bridal preps (poor sod, it was a Sunday too) until 9 at night. He also brought his apprentice along for the day between 12 and 9 so we had 2 togs there.

The photos and filming of my wedding were an important aspect of my day and were not something I would have scrimped on. On the flip side, I wasn't willing to pay much more than I have done / or be ripped off for an inferior product. We're actually only just sending our album off to be produced as it ook us 7 months to choose our photos, there were too many that I loved so am more than happy with the tog I chose.

For me it was more about getting value for money than having a specific budget. If I'd have had to pay, say, £1.5k for fantastic service and products then I would have done, but an awful lot of companies charge that amount for far less. As it was I've got an awesome photographer for a very reasonable amount because of the other work he does.

As for what I was looking for - priority for me was somebody that I would feel comfortable with as I hate having my picture taken. All the other normal things too but that was the most important.

We had a pretty healthy budget (although we weren't prepared to stretch to Boggio-esque proportions of a starting package of £4600...!). We knew we wanted to togs, we knew we needed to love their style and we both needed to feel confident with them.

We chose Murakami Photography who have been amazing to deal with, we couldn't be happier! We ended up plumping for a digital package but with a view to having an album prepared. They were keen for us not to commit to an album package if we didn't want to when we signed their contract as they suggested that we might want different things once we've seen the photos, which makes perfect sense to me.

We did pay extra for a disk of images from our pre wedding shoot (although not compulsory or even necessary as they provided us with a gallery to view them). I found them to be excellent value.

I have to admit th ephotography budget was one of the things we didn't set before hand. Photographs were important to us so we hunted around until we found a photographer who's images we loved then worked from there.

some things that were important to us were

a) having the option to buy all the photo's of the day and the copyright on a CD.

b) finding someone who would catapture all the little moments rather than focusing on posed group shots. (for example we have no posed shot of signing the regisiter).

c) When meeting photographer being able to see lots of examples of their work and not just one sample book

Our budget was £2500, mainly because my wife to be is a photography nut and was very picky. The main thing that was important to her was the overall quality of the image and the style - she turned down one photographer I really liked because they had too many "pictures of people running around in fields" even though I tried to assure her that nobody would force her to run around in a field on the day if she didn't want to.

There were a number of things important to me. I like to see a well developed website, for me that's their shop window and if it obviously hasn't had much work done to it then that leads me to think they don't value their business and makes me wonder if they'll value my wedding. Also if there are lots of typing errors, that'll have a similar effect on me. Obviously quality of the images is important to me, the website is just the first thing I check to help me decide if I want to look at the galleries. The style is also very important, i don't like all of those forced shots, speech bubbles and that kind of thing. Another big issue is whether the photographer views me as someone who can make a decision, a few photographers we looked at pitched exclusively to my fiancee, mistakenly thinking that all they have to do is convince her.

We didn't initially set a budget, as to be honest neither of us had any idea how much photography costed! But once we started looking, we both agreed that it was a really important part of the day and that we would be happy to spend up to £1500 on the right one.

When we were researching online, the factors that were important to us were:

- No wonky shots - I think they're just naff

- Mainly reportage style - We liked to see natural laughter rather than faked smiles

- Coming in below the budget - Anything over we closed immediately!

- Use of colour in the photos

- Website ease of use and quality - If it was naff looking, then to me that indicated that their creativity was naff in general.

- Another thing that often put me off was a couple of togs who just had contact forms on their website, and no contact details. I like to email people directly - Not fill in a form!

In the end we met with two photographers, and our final choice was based on personality. The first we met took stunning pictures, but had zero sense of humour and took themself far too seriously (and hardly even cracked a smile) so we just didn't think they would add anything to the day by being there. Also, the 2nd photographer they would have supplied could have been anyone and didn't see any work of theirs. The ones we went with are a couple who work together (so seeing both of their work) and had a brilliant sense of humour, and I can totally imagine them just mingling with the guests and getting on with them really well! And I think this will show in the pictures.

It is quite expensive for what we get, but in our neck of the woods (down south) I don't think its too bad- and I'm 100% sure they'll do a grand job!

Our package is £1350 and includes:

- Two photographers all day (inc bride and groom preparations and a bit after the first dance)

- DVD with all images on high-res

- Bellissimo photobook with 125 images

- 2 gift photobooks

And we're paying an extra £150 for an engagement shoot within the next couple of months.

Thank you all so far for your feedback!

If anyone has any more that'd be brilliant...

We had a budget of £1000 but ended up spending £1250. I knew photography was important to us but I didn't think I'd have such a strong reaction to the photos by the person I've chosen. I found her while searching for wedding pictures of our venue and I loved the style and clarity of shots and also the actual shots she had taken.

For our money we are getting full coverage on the day from bridal prep through to first dance and copyright to the images. The package doesn't include an album but we can add this at a later date or choose to source one ourselves.

Our budget was £1000 but think we're gonna spend more than that. It was most important to us that we had digital copyright free images, and found a photographer we got on with. We met him at a wedding fayre, the same wedding fayre where we met another guy with a fake tan and whitened teeth who spent 10 minutes telling me about how he takes 'really classy photos' while trying to look down my top (we didn't book him). The guy we've gone with has different basic packagaes, all including a CD of all the photos copyright free, and all include 2 photographers. Then if you want an album you can pay for that separately. Also we've paid deposit to book them for the day, but we don't need to committ to a package til 6 months before wedding, so can see how healthy the budget is looking then and decide which we can afford.

I have to admit that when planning our budget I had not factored in photography to be so expensive, however we both agreed that the pictures were very important part of our day as we could look back for years to come.

I visited various wedding fairs and also had togs come and visit me at home. In the end we ended up going with somebody that i felt relaxed around, he made me laugh, he understood what we wanted, which is unobtrusive, natural, not all formal photos. We also wanted a videographer and he is in partnership with somebody, so we knew they would work well together and not get in each others way. I loved his albums and the wedding dvd samples he brought round to show me.

We ended up going for both photographer and videographer, all day coverage for both (bride preps through to evening reception), with a 40 page storeybook photo album, all pictures on a disk and a edited dvd of the day. As we booked over a year in advance we got a early booking discount so it all came up to £1400.

I didnt want to spend more then £600, we found a photographer we loved but his smallest package was £650, but we preferred the £750 package, cause we got him for a lot longer. So he is giving us this package for £700

We loved that his photos were very natural and beautiful. OH is a web/graphic designer, so is very into the detail shots, he has worked with lots of very good photographers before so the person we chose had to take amazing pictures. I on the other hand was willing to not have a photographer but I am glad that the OH changed my mind.

Bx

We wanted to just try get the best deal we could but realistically we thought £800 max as we wanted a tog for the whole day plus a cd of all the images which we know isnt cheap. Luckily we found a really great local guy whos doing a deal for us at £699 inc a pre wedding shoot and canvas.

I would say the most important thing for us was to have the rights to all the images and to have them on a cd afterwards. I know some togs charge extra for this and even then its only the images they choose.

Our budget was £800 but we found a lovely lady who had an offer for £995 which includes all rights and all images on a CD, which was vital for my OH as he loves messing about with photos and loads of togs we met with did not include the rights or all images. The price includes all day, prep to first dance, or whatever we want really, plus 20 images chosen by us in an amazing quality and stylish album - I don't usually care about stuff like that, but the albums she had were brilliant. The best thing is she was fun and flexible.

One tog we met with asked what type of shots we liked. I explained I wanted a shot similar to my gran's wedding photo, with just her flowers highlighted and the rest in sepia, he pulled a face and said he would do it, but didn't really want to as he thought it was cheap and tacky. Um hello, did you just say that to a potential customer?! When I am explaining how beautiful my gran's wedding photo is?! Needless to say we did not book him and after a few desperate emails he sent a sort of 'ner ner I now have a booking on your date' email hahaha.

Our budget was £1000 and tbh I'm not sure if we've gone over or not. But this is why we liked our TOG - we can't decide which package we wanted (option a. within budget or option b. over!). He's letting us choose nearer to the time

We just wanted a relaxed and creative style so i looked at a lot of local TOG's websites and ruled out a few, then met up with 3 and the one we chose is the one we liked the most

We were hoping for a basic package at around £600-700 but ended up going for one which costs £975 simply because, in our opinion, they were the best we had found. Their was another tog we liked whose basic package was £2000 and we agreed that was too much. Our package includes:

pre-wedding photo shoot

2 togs from bridal prep right up to 1st dance and longer if we have anything special planned

mini photo album which they will put together themselves

all photos on cd

The reasons we went for them were that seemed keen to find out what kind of people we were so they could make our photos unique to us; we got on well with them, more so than any of the other togs we had met; their style of photography was exactly what we wanted - very natural and modern (not using out-dated techniques like other local togs); everyone in their photos looked happy. the main thing we were looking for though, was someone who wasn't too pushy and had a relaxed, polite personality. A lot of the togs at weddings I've been to have been so concerned with getting the perfect photo that they've been rude to guests, blocked guests' view of the b&g during special moments (1st dance, cutting of the cake), and, at one wedding, yelled at the b&g's 18mnth old son for ruining the photo and made him cry!