I have been asked this so many times... does the wedding industry inflate prices when they hear it's a wedding?
Here is my honest answer (as a former wedding photographer)... NO. Did I charge more for a wedding than a 50th birthday party or a family portrait session? Yes, absolutely. I charged A LOT more for a wedding.
Was I taking advantage of the emotional sell? Absolutely not.
The main reasons I charged more for a wedding were: the unseen amount of work involved in the 12+ months leading up to the wedding, the skill level needed on the day, the INTENSE pressure to create perfect "portfolio level work" no matter what the reality of the situation- but mostly it is to compensate for the time AFTER the wedding in post production.
Little known fact about wedding photography - the real job is sitting at a computer editing photos. Photographers spend many hours behind the computer carefully selecting and editing photos. They make adjustments, crop, and adjust colors to ensure each image it's best. Don't forget the time it takes for batching, renaming, importing, exporting and uploading the photos and preparing them for delivery.
Do you think this justifies why photographers charge more for weddings than for other types of shoots?
2 comments
Okay, I've heard some BAD toasts in my wedding photographer days. But here is the worst. I can't even believe I am going to share it with you.
The groom was an obvious player before he met his bride. He had 12 groomsmen and it was brought up and joked about all throughout the wedding day. I felt so bad for the bride but she took it in stride.
So here it is, deep into the reception 🍷, and the best man takes the mic for his toast. He made a tasteless joke about how many apartment keys the groom had given out to ladies he had slept with. Then he looked around the reception (right in front of the FOB!) and said, "Ok ladies, if you had your fun with 'grooms name'... time to turn in your keys".
This is the awful part- he had went around and handed out keys to all the women at the wedding during cocktail hour. So half of the wedding guest got up and dropped their key on the brides & grooms sweetheart table!!
I was zoomed in on the brides face. Eyes full of tears.
Some of the BEST I've heard involve the speaker being self-deprecating, i.e. "Matt was athletic and popular growing up, while I was short and looked like Eminem." These loosened up the crowd and were ways to compliment the Groom or Bride while generating some early laughter. One of my all-time favorites was a MOH talking in a playful way about how opposites attract...at one point she said, "Liz's favorite food i fries, aaaand Mike is allergic to potatos. Mike's favorite food is ice cream, aaaaand Liz is lactose intolerant." Any time people make the room laugh, share glimpses into the couple's life, and then bring it back to emotional/sentimental, it resonates a lot with me.
I don't know if I can beat Robin's WORST...that's freakin unbelievable. But I've heard some bad ones too. Once, a MOH made a list of all the "Rules the Groom needs to follow if he's going to marry my best friend." It was like she wanted control of their married life haha. It was more cringeworthy than loving, and to make things worse, the toast was written on an iPad and the screen kept freezing. "Oops, oh, hang on, let me refresh it. Aww no screen turned off." I felt like I was in one of those Southwest Airlines "Wanna Get Away" commercials, so I can only imagine how the groom felt.
Another of the WORST i've seen was a Best Man saying "I would tell you this story, but the bride asked me not to," then 30 seconds later, "I'm also not supposed to say this next story, but if you were there, you know." He did that kind of thing about five minutes, so his toast ended up being more about what it wasn't than what it was. He finished after about 3 minutes and I remember thinking "Wait where's the rest of the speech." Plus the bride was basically made to look like the Queen of the No Fun Police. Wasn't fair to her, and it didn't make the audience feel like we were on the inside...more like, we missed out on all the fun in the past.