Comments on: What happens if you can't hire a professional photographer?

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:33:46 +0000

You spend a lot of money on a wedding, and then you want to take the cheap route on a photographer. A non pro as you guys are hiring do not carry insurance, what if something goes wrong, how will you be covered? The non pro does not use pro gear or pro lenes or have more then one camera. I have almost 20,000 dollars invested in gear so I can be ready for any-thing, and My prices start at 1,200

I have heard way to many bad stories from people who have hired so called friends, your not doing yourself any favors. HIRE A PRO, even if all you get is a CD of images.

By: Katy

Katy — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:12:54 +0000

My brother got married 2 years ago, they had a pro photographer, but didn't buy the prints. They got them on CD's instead, added in family and friend's photos, and had a flickr site for all of us to upload to. I took the photos and made an anniversary present for them of a professional wedding album from MyPublisher. It was perfect, they have tons of templates and frames for the books they publish. You can choose your cover options: leather, linen (I found one that matched the wedding colors), and paper dust jackets. You can add as many pictures as you want, and the final cost was very reasonable and a third the cost of the professional book their photographer was offering.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:37:26 +0000

Friends used a student from the local university for their wedding. I believe she charged $400 for the day (8am-8pm). They ended up with GREAT shots. She went above and beyond. She took a picture of the bride's ballet slippers sitting haphazardly on the bride's chair. She got a shot of one of the cousins trying to give the goldfish center pieces "air."

Don't forget…wedding pictures are as much about the guests as the bride and groom. The B&G are too busy on that day to really look around and notice the little details. A great wedding photographer helps capture the details so the bride and groom can look at them later.

By: Cookie Monsta

Cookie Monsta — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:51:37 +0000

Definitely check your local photography schools, post a notice and see how you go. We did, and we have a lovely girl coming to our wedding for 5 hours, with another photography course friend, armed with double cameras, for the princely sum of $150, yes that's right $150.

We also get an engagement shoot for free to get to know her and her us, and then we are getting all of the Photoshopped pictures on disk, along with all the raw ones. No actual prints, that's up to us, but for that cost who cares?

Ask them to show you their portfolio as it stands, be it with friends, places, inanimates to get an idea of their work.

If you are a bit worried about the quality you'll get, hire another one at the same time. We had about five people offer the same deal for us and just picked the one whose work we liked most.

By: megan v

megan v — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:23:59 +0000

This is a really good topic to be bringing up!! I got married in January and it was a very tiny wedding with 30 guests. Our budget was really to spend as little money as we could but to still make things really nice. In total I may have spent… $1000. We were going back and forth on getting a photographer but ended up not getting one. In hindsight I should have tried to find an aspiring photographer or student! My husband argued that our relatives and friends would take enough pictures. What he didn't get was that QUALITY of photos is SO different from untrained people and their low quality digital cameras. In total after sorting through sooo many photos, we DID end up with some great shots (and i'm great in photoshop, luckily which helps) – but goodness it would have been so much nicer to have a whole set of really nice ones and not have to dig through tons of really similar photos of different qualities. Don't feel like you need to spend five grand to have wedding photos. You won't look at them often enough to be worth five grand! But, DO get SOMEONE to focus on taking quality pictures for you so you can look back on the details of the day that will fly by so quickly!!

By: Bethany

Bethany — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:46:56 +0000

I was struggling with the same issue when the skies parted and it hit me; why not use someone that is trying to make their break into the photography world? Like a student in photography or a friend of a friend that does pictures but needs some experience with weddings! That was our solution. My co-worker's friend from high school (phew! that was a lot) is trying to get into photography but doesn't have experience enough to consider herself a professional that could charge a million dollars. I got in contact with her (after seeing many photos she has taken) and asked if she would be willing to do our wedding photos. She jumped on it like a hungry baby in a topless bar.

She is coming for the entire day (and offered to come to any other wedding related functions we might be having) and said she would only charge us for the prints and supplies. Most photographers that are getting their start will be willing to do it for the experience! It's nice too because she has all the equipment and the ability to edit pictures to perfection so I won't be missing out on the quality aspect. WEE!!!!

By: Jen J

Jen J — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:28:07 +0000

THANK YOU for posting this. My friend, who is an amatur photographer, just backed out on me, so my spouse and I have been trying to figure out what to do about this.

The debate of Quality vs. having-to-sell-a-kidney-to-pay-for-the-wedding seems to be a general soul searching theme in wedding planning. Thank you for posting an alternative to this delema.

By: Sara

Sara — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:21:47 +0000

I had the worst time with this!!! The photographers I wanted cost $5000.00…. that would be my whole wedding budget folks. So I went around looking for cheaper packages, but the problem was that my FH is into amatuer photography and occasionally shoots weddings as a favor to people. So there I was searching for a photographer when most of them didn't shoot weddings nearly as well as my FH, and cost four time the amount he charges!

I did end up finding someone who has the best personality, and that is pretty important in a photographer to me. Still, I thought Meg had great advice for this, especially for people who really don't want a lot of photographs, but instead a few quality ones.

By: BlueyJ

BlueyJ — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:40:05 +0000

Man, I struggled with this. After 1.5 years of planning, and the original thought that, "all our friends are photographers–we'll get tons of nice pics," I gradually psyched myself out, to the point where I started really stressing about our lack of pro photographer. I have soaked in so many gorgeous, luminous, poignant and perfect thousands of wedding porneriffic photos over the last 18 months. I definitely didn't want our wedding to be a fashion shoot, but I somehow started feeling that it would not be a "real" wedding if I did not have gorgeous, edgy and magazine-worthy photos from the day. I also worried that our friends would make a beeline for the open bar and the single ladies and forget about taking pictures.
Luckily, the ladies of the OBB were there to yank me back down to Earth. We found an AMAZING aspiring photographer couple who are going to at least take the important family portraits my Mum craves, for an extremely small amount of moula. The rest of the time, our buddies can pick up girls and drink sangria with cameras in hand—I am sure we'll get some great moments captured for our grandchildren. Heh.
My other "real world" bride friends are all extremely concerned with our lack of professional (although now somewhat mollified by our great find). Thanks for posting this! It helps:)