Affordable Wedding Photography: How To

“If you are looking for affordable wedding photography, then make sure you keep the cost of buying and sharing your wedding pictures in mind. After all, what good are wedding pictures if you don't get them or can't share them.” – John B, Microsoft Director of Events (John’s Wedding Photo Sharing Website)

Summary: It's easy to get affordable wedding pictures once you understand your options for taking, getting, and sharing your wedding pictures.

Introduction

Affordable wedding photography is as easy as 1-2-3 once you understand a bit of insider information regarding:

Affordable Wedding Photography Step 1: Taking Your Wedding Pictures

When it comes to saving money taking your wedding pictures, the key is to think about the training and experience of the person taking the photos, since wedding photography training and experience is expensive.

Professional wedding photographers are the most trained and experience option you have. Because of this, it is very difficult to find an affordable professional wedding photographer.

Professional wedding photographers charge between $1,000 and $3,000 for two to six hours of their time. And that’s just the cost of having them take your wedding pictures. We haven’t gotten into the most expensive part yet: getting and sharing your wedding pictures.

If $3,000 just to take your wedding pictures is a bit pricey for you, then you may consider saving some money on your wedding photography by using an amateur wedding photographer. Amateur wedding photographers are generally are about half as trained and about half as experienced as professional wedding photographers, and are consequently about half as expensive as professional wedding photographers.

While an amateur wedding photographer is a step in the right direction towards affordable wedding photography, you will still need to spend between $500 and $1,500 just to get your wedding pictures taken. Again, we still have not included the cost of getting or sharing your wedding pictures.

Your final and most affordable wedding photography option is to do your wedding photography yourself (aka DIY wedding photography). While this may sound a bit complex, it is actually very simple thanks to relatively new do it yourself wedding photography services.

To be fair, the friends and family with your digital wedding cameras will not be anywhere close to as trained or experienced as a professional wedding photographer. That being said, they cost $0, you’ll have a lot of them (because you will have a lot of digital wedding cameras), and each of them can take over 450 photos (because each digital wedding cameras takes over 450 pictures), so you’ll almost certainly get some great wedding pictures.

Best of all, when it comes to affordable wedding photography, it doesn’t get better than do it yourself wedding photography packages. DIY wedding photography packages start at $495, and that includes everything (i.e. it includes getting and sharing your wedding pictures).

So when it comes to affordable wedding photography, you’ll save the most money doing it yourself with digital wedding cameras, save the least money with a professional photographer, and fall right in the middle with an amateur wedding photographer.

That's the deal on how your can affordably take your wedding pictures. Now let’s talk about step two: saving money getting your wedding pictures.

Affordable Wedding Photography Step 2: Getting Your Wedding Pictures

When it comes to saving money getting your wedding pictures, it is important to understand the massive differences in wedding picture pricing models. For example, professional wedding photographers charge per photo, with each of your wedding photos costing $5 to $50. Now compare this to DIY digital wedding camera services which don’t charge you anything for any of your wedding photos. That’s a pretty big difference…especially if you are in the market for affordable wedding photography!

This means that if you think you’ve found an affordable wedding photographer, make sure to ask them how many wedding pictures they generally take per wedding, and what they charge per wedding picture. If you are not careful here, and do not ask the right questions, you may end up throwing your wedding photography budget out the window or simply not getting all of your wedding photos. After all, 200 wedding pictures at $15 a picture is $3,000. And if you are keeping track, then you know we are already at $6,000 for professional wedding photography ($3,000 for taking + $3,000 for getting), and that we haven’t even gotten to sharing your wedding pictures yet!

If over $6,000 is a bit much for you, then you may want to consider an amateur wedding photographer. With an amateur wedding photographer you have less of a chance of breaking your wedding photography budget or not getting all of your wedding photos since you can often negotiate “package deals” where all of your wedding photos only cost a few hundred dollars. While a few hundred dollars is certainly more affordable than a few thousand, keep in mind that this still in addition to paying the amateur photographer to take pictures, and of course says nothing about the cost of sharing your wedding pictures.

Do it yourself wedding photography services take a much different approach to getting your wedding pictures to you. In fact, it’s basically impossible to have a more affordable wedding photography model since they don’t charge you or any of your guests anything for any of your wedding photos.

Included in DIY wedding photography packages is a CD with all of the pictures from each of your digital wedding cameras, as well as unlimited downloading, printing, and sharing from the wedding photo sharing website the DIY service creates for you after your wedding.

So much like with taking your wedding pictures, you’re going to save the most money on your wedding photography with digital wedding cameras, the least with professional wedding photography, and land right in the middle with amateur photography.

With step two behind us—saving money i>getting your wedding pictures—let’s move on to step three: saving money sharing your wedding pictures.

Affordable Wedding Photography Step 3: Sharing Wedding Pictures

When it comes to saving money sharing your wedding pictures it is important to understand how wedding photography “rights” work. “Rights,” in the context of wedding photos, is all about who owns the photo and who is allowed to share it.

For example, have you ever seen a photo that had a huge watermark across it? That’s because whoever showed it to you didn’t own it and wasn’t allowed to share it. And guess what, this is how all your photos will look when you first get them from professional or amateur wedding photographers. You will have watermarks all over all of your wedding photos because you will not have the “rights” to the photos until you buy the “rights” from the professional photographer or amateur photographer.

And it is important to note that buying the “rights” to a wedding picture is not the same as buying a copy of the wedding picture. When you buy a physical print of one of your wedding pictures from your wedding photographer, you are not allowed to make copies or share it digitally. Unfortunately, buying “rights” is much more expensive than buying a copy (since it is basically like buy an infinite number of copies). In fact, the rights to professional photos can cost anywhere from $50 to $5,000 ($5,000 is not a typo. If you want to prove it to yourself type "buy professional photos" into your favorite search engine and see how much it costs to buy the “rights” to some of the professional photos that you find.

And all this being said, do not give up hope. There are ways to save money sharing your wedding pictures. Specifically, DIY wedding photography services give you the rights to all of your wedding photos for free. Yep. None of the pictures from your digital wedding cameras are watermarked, and you can do whatever you want with any and all of them. Grab your wedding pictures from your free CD or online at your free wedding photo sharing website, and share for free.

Wrap-Up

Saving money on wedding photography is as easy as 1-2-3: professional wedding photographers are your least affordable wedding photography option, followed by amateur wedding photographers, and with DIY wedding photography services saving you the most money taking, getting, and sharing your wedding photos.

In the words of About.com’s wedding expert Nina Callaway: “…if the high cost of wedding photography is simply out of your reach, getting friends and family to take digital pictures is a good alternative.”

PS You may also want to check out the handy Wedding Photography Quiz which helps you easily pick the best photography option for your wedding.

About the Author: Jonathan Bailor is the Managing Partner of the premier affordable wedding photography service CameraRenter.

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