Understanding Wedding Photography Pricing | All about your Investment | Virginia Wedding Photographers

Your wedding ring. It’s a symbol of something timeless. Of wholeness, completeness.

You’ll wear it until you pass it on to your descendants.

The wedding ring is something which couples normally budget for in their weddings and usually, (unless it’s inherited), don’t flinch at investing a good deal into it.

It’s something that will last forever and will forever hold the two of you together as it reminds you of your bond with your spouse.

There’s one other thing that you could apply that description to with your wedding… you can guess what it is.

We don’t mean to step on anybody’s toes or upset anybody – this is just us explaining why we price our collections.

We get many wedding inquiries – and we get excited about each and every one. The excitement of newly engaged couples is so special!

Hearing about the venue and the love story behind it all makes us smile when we open up the email.

When we get an inquiry from a couple that is genuinely excited to meet us, we get excited too. Knowing you are entrusted with capturing the most important day of their lives is…incredible.

When we receive inquiries, the first thing we like to do is invite you out for coffee. It’s a trade – we buy you coffee, you tell us your love story.

We love getting to know you and making sure we’re a right fit.

One thing we hear of sometimes, not from “our” couples, of course, is that wedding photography is overpriced.

Your investment with us really is an “investment.” Documenting one of the most important days of your lives is something you invest in not only for yourselves, but for your children… and their children.

Our couples know the value of what they are investing in even though sometimes we work out payment plans, they love the images we create enough to see the value in them.

But for some, wedding photography pricing is just, across the board, too high.

The value of beautiful wedding photos speak for themselves. Their permanence. It’s what we first fell in love with about photography. It’s what still amazes us about photography. Our photos of our travels in Egypt years ago still take us back, even on a cold day like today, to a crowded Egyptian bazaar, with sand in our mouths and eyes, the scent of saffron and other spices mixing with the fumes of the diesel engines of Nile cruise ships in our noses.

2010

Memory is transient; photos remain.

That’s priceless.

Your investment includes a lot that most people don’t automatically think of, as well.

When you invest with us, you’re investing in:

• - hours of work on the wedding day, the day of your engagement session
• - oh, we forgot to mention… the engagement session which we include in our wedding collections
• - hours of work planning, emailing, location scouting, communicating, editing, retouching, saving, delivering behind the scenes
• - $$,$$$.$$+++ worth of professional photography equipment (we won’t go too much into detail but the lens we use just for lovely ringshots like the one above costs almost $1,000.00).
• - professional insurance for said camera equipment
• - professional, up-to-date editing software (and the training & experience of using it)
• - liability insurance
• - legal fees for contracts, etc.
• - Federal, state, county taxes
• - fees for an accountant to help us with taxes
• - $$$.$$+ worth of film for each engagement session and wedding
• - $$$$.$$ ++ invested in training so we can offer the best to our clients
• - terabytes of harddrives and online hosting to preserve and protect your images if you should lose them
• - online, instantly downloadable galleries
• - website fees
• - a reliable vehicle to make sure we are there on the big day
• - travel
• - funds we continually invest in our business to help make it successful

… the list goes on.

We love what we do. There couldn’t be a better career for us. We definitely don’t mind working.

But it is a business. Just because it’s a creative business doesn’t mean that the work put into it is of less value than the effort put into any other line of work. Michael recently had to stop by the dentist… when he got the bill he joked with the dentist, “Maybe you could use my teeth for your portfolio? I have a lot of friends that would love to book you and could get you some great exposure!” lol

Aside from the expenses mentioned, we have commitments and responsibilities like anyone else. Photography is how we pay our bills – one day we’d like to start a family, too. In the meantime we’d like to buy groceries.

And one thing we cannot do is justify offering arbitrary discounts to clients who like our work, but who don’t like the idea of investing in it.

A friend of ours mentioned once that she estimated she had given away…. given away, as in donated… over $5,000.00 to clients in “discounts” in the space of one year.

Imagine if you felt pressured to do the same to survive?

It’s not fair to us, nor to our clients who already have invested in our work. More importantly, it’s not fair to the family we hope to have someday (whom we are trying to save for now!).

Please understand… this isn’t about any specific person. And we know some people honestly just can’t afford what we offer. It’s tough to get a message from a person excited about our work but who “just can’t afford it.”

If we can’t be there for your wedding, we always try and make ourselves available for a couple session, bridal portrait session, or an engagement session.

At the same time, we’re also not the most expensive photographers out there, and as we value your experience over any kind of sales, we really try to make sure you get the most out of your experience with us.

This is just an explanation as to why our prices are the way they are.

This is also a big, big thank you to all of our clients who value our work. We are so honored to know each and everyone of you. When we had to raise our pricing last year literally so we could continue to survive on photography, we were quite nervous… terrified is perhaps a better word.

A week later, Andrew and Jessica, Kim and Brian, and Cameron and Julia all met with us and booked us for their big day.

(Photographers take note – don’t doubt the value of your work! Your clients are out there and they’ll love your work so you should too!)

We’re humbled and blessed to know all of you – all of our clients – and can’t thank you enough for inviting us to be part of your weddings.

xoxo

Carina (& Michael)

Virginia Wedding Photographers | Destination Wedding Photographers | Hampton Roads Wedding Photographers