Student/friend photographer

£1k for a half day does sound on the high side IMO. I would suggest to keep looking. A factor on the cost is the time of year and the day of the week you are planing. Warwickshire is next door to me and certainly within my "catchment area" I would be happy to look at this for you.

Bill is right that seems steep, keep looking around as you should find cheaper alternative. Ours is 1200 for a full 10 hour package with images and rights and a 100 page album. Whist it seems a high cost a professional photographer was a must have for us as it is the lasting memories of the day so was worth spending on and we spent ages lookig for the perfect photographer who had the style we wanted. You really do get what you pay for so if you can I would try and find the extra to get the best images, if you really cant the student idea is good, if you can find one through a local college or social media site wherre you can see examples of their work to be sure you will get good quality

View quoted message Our friend that is getting married the year after us got quoted £700 for whole day and drone included so think we are going to get a quote off him as we are only having ceremony and evening do

View quoted message Definitely worth shopping around, main thing is to really get a good look at their portfolio to see it matches the style you want

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Sample images are a good start but the real test is to ask to see a whole wedding. To some extent the best of the best hand picked images on a website are not always a good reflection of someone's work.

That does seem really expensive. We’re paying £750 for a full day and the package includes an engagement shoot as well.


Our photographer isn’t exactly a student but is relatively new to it. We found her on Instagram, she did some work assisting a shoot with a more experienced, expensive photographer. We initially spotted the photographer she was assisting, but she looks great and is a lot cheaper.
Maybe worth a try looking on social media!

View quoted message Thank you keeping all options open currently

That sounds like a ripoff to me, for that price I'd expect full day with a second person and a few extras in there.


We got lucky that my OH made friends with a photographer through volunteering our daughter to model whole she built her portfolio but even without £1k for half a day is steep

That sounds steep. We got married in South Wales, so a cheap area, but could have had our photographer plus a second shooter for a whole 12 hours for just over £1,000. Half day was around £500-600

We found ours by stalking Instagram feeds of people who’d got married at our venue and finding their photographers. The prices quoted by these photographers were significantly better than the ones who have clearly paid out to come up at the top of Google searches etc., and it also gave us a feel for how they would work with our venue.
There’s nothing wrong with using a student/less experienced photographer, but just remember that the photos will be the main memories you have of your day, and therefore you want to make sure they are good quality.

The thing with facebook and even more so instergram is that posted images will be the best from a wedding and may not be a good representation of a whole wedding.

Also I am seeing more "styled shoots" which are basically fake wedding set ups using models. Quite often it will not be stated that it's a styled shoot, it will be things like "loving the vibe from this couple"

The problem with a styled shoot is that one shot has taken hours to set up with bespoke lighting so it has nothing to do with how a real wedding actually rolls.

They stem from the need to self publicise sometimes from shooters who prehaps do not have enough actual weddings to show. Its usually all done for free, hair, makeup,flowers, venue.

I can tell a styled shoot a mile off but it may not be that obvious to everyone. Look at the instergram caption and you will see the list of suppliers for the shoot and sometimes it may list the models. Another way to check is do you see any guests anywhere in a ceremony looking shot - do you see empty chairs and the big giveaway is there will be no registrar in the shot. Also is it just one table set up as a wedding breakfast.

Ha, I get it. Sometimes students are so busy they wish they could just pay someone to take my class and get the work done for them. Kind of like how student photographers might jump at a chance to shoot your wedding. They’re eager to build their portfolio and get experience, so you can get amazing, creative shots without spending a fortune.