How to Choose a Wedding Photographer
Step 4: Coming to terms with price
wedding albums come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and quality making it hard to compare packages that include an album.
Full-time, professional wedding photographers typically charge between $2000 and $8000 to photograph a wedding. In Georgia, the average for 8 hours of coverage by an experienced wedding photographer is about $4000.
Generally, if you spend more, you get more coverage (number of hours or number of photographers,) more or better products (prints or albums,) better service, or better photographs ... perhaps all four.
Comparison shopping?
As much as I'd like to be able to tell you that you can compare photographers, like you compare apples to apples, I can't. Comparison shopping for photographers is almost impossible.
It's sort of like comparison shopping for antique oriental rugs. No two are the same. What one person values, another may not. A smaller rug may be considered more valuable than a larger one. If a rug has a higher price tag, you assume it's better, but it may not be.
To complicate things even more, photographers create packages that include engagement sessions, albums,canvas prints, extra photographers, rehearsal dinner coverage, etc.
What to do?
Given a limited budget, the practical solution is to get the best photography you can with what you have to spend now, and plan to buy an album or prints when you can afford them. (Better to have awesome photos you can do something with later, than an album full of mediocre photos.)
If you're not constrained by budget, then your job is much easier. Find a photographer whose work you love, who will design a great album for you and have it printed by a top-notch album company, and if your personalities gel, then book!
“If you know how to wait, people will forget your camera, then their souls will open up.”
