Is there a wedding markup? Are wedding vendors just greedy jerks who want to fleece you? No, we are generally honest, hardworking, creative people who want to be paid fairly for our time. Do I have a wedding markup? As an event planner in the Philadelphia area? No, I don’t. But I mostly charge by the hour and so wedding involves more hours. But my rate is the same whether it’s a corporate event or a wedding. Other vendors might have a wedding markup because it involves more back and forth between the couple. It could be for invitations, it could be for photography or videography, it could be catering. These details when it involves a wedding probably take a lot more time than an event that is more simple and cut and dry. And so if your vendor is charging you a flat rate then then they need to be compensated for all of that back and forth and revision and customization. And that’s why it may seem like it’s a markup, but it is really just being compensated for the time.

Yes. You’re not crazy. There’s absolutely a wedding markup. I’m libby dollar. I’ve shot weddings in 26 states. So this is not regional commentary at all. Whether it’s explicitly stated or not, weddings are expected to be perfect, and getting close to perfect requires more and more and more time, money, preparation, expertise, assistance, all this kind of stuff. If I’m going to photograph family photos on a Wednesday evening at a park and I forget about it, it’s never happened. But it could. Or I get sick or something happens with my family, I can reschedule. If the weather is terrible, if my camera breaks, I can reschedule. We can do it again. You can’t do a wedding again, and you can’t just mess up an hour worth of photos. Oh, heck, I had the wrong settings on no. You are expected for all 1012 14 hours that you’re there to produce evidence of every single thing that happened in the most artistic way that’s congruent with your portfolio and all of this kind of stuff. Other events that are as, do or die, that have a firm date, have high expectations, are priced the same as weddings. Events that can be rescheduled or are lower priority or have lower expectations, those are the things that get a discount.

Yeah, no, I would say a wedding markup is definitely not a thing. I’m a wedding photographer based in Montana. And yeah, I can definitely say when I photograph an event, it’s going to be cheaper than a wedding. But the reason behind this is the amount of effort that goes into a normal event is going to be just substantially less on my part. I mean, for example, I’m shooting a bar mitzvah this weekend. They hired me for a couple of hours. I talked to them once on the phone. I’m going to show up, I’m going to do the pictures. I’ll edit them, get them to them pretty easy. We’re, on the other hand, with a wedding, I mean, gosh, that is months and months of preparation. Usually there’s maybe an engagement shoot. There’s an album design. You’re looking at just a massively long day. There’s just a lot more work that goes into it, even just things down to coordinating a schedule and bringing on additional help. Normal event, I can show up. I can do it by myself. But a wedding is going to take more people from my team. I’m probably going to have to hire out an editor as well. Just with the amount of weddings that I’m doing in a summer and the quality that needs to come with the images, just weddings are one of those once in a lifetime things and they have to be done right.