Wedding Photography

Wedding photography can be another big ticket item, up there with your catering and venue costs. You can spend thousands of dollars on the right wedding photographer. In my opinion, wedding photography is one of the most important decisions in the wedding planning process. Your wedding photos are going to stay with you for the rest of your life, so you want to make sure you get what you want!

Like most of the items from your wedding planning process, the first thing to decide on is your budget. How much are you willing to spend on a photographer? What do you want for your money? Do you just want someone to come and snap a few pictures of your wedding day and give you a DVD with the raw images or would you rather have two photographers covering the bride and groom getting ready right through to your first dance, fully edited images printed and displayed in a beautiful Queensbury photo album? There are a range of wedding photography packages which you can choose from, each photographer generally will have a few popular packages for you to choose from. Remember wedding photography prices can vary quite a great deal in different areas of the country, with the big cities such as Auckland and Wellington being on average more expensive – although the trade off is you have many more photographers to choose from!

The cost of your photographer is going to depend on what you get. Their reputation also has a lot to do with price, it’s like paying for a brand or label, you always pay more for the well known brands whether they’re any better in quality than the cheaper competition or not. Professional wedding photography generally comes at a premium price – expect to pay upwards of $3000 for a basic package.

Once you have a budget set you can begin researching various wedding photographers. The number one rule is to make sure you view a comprehensive variety of their recent work. Don’t make your decision based on a few great photos that are displayed in their website portfolio, ask to see entire wedding sets from previous couples. This will give you a good idea of their overall style.

My favourite style is “photojournalistic” with post editing. I love dramatic colors and black and white photos, so I would need a photographer who is fully capable of using a photo editing software to get the right photo finishes.

Once you’ve found the pefect wedding photographer, make sure you sign a contract stating the price and what’s included. This protects you from any price increases (unless stated otherwise) and ensures you will get what you’ve paid for.

If a professional wedding photographer just isn’t in your budget, you should at least have someone with a good quality SLR camera taking your pictures. There are many wedding photography tips to be found online, have them do some research before committing to taking your wedding photos.