My wife and I often wonder if what we are charging is appropriate for what we provide to a bride and groom on the day.
Our 'package' includes
- 2 photographers for the day : one to shoot the bride preparation, another for the groom
- Photographs of the ceremony, locations, and reception.
- If they provide us dinner we take $100 off the cost.
- We will stay at the reception usually until the bridal waltz.
- There is no other supporting staff, just the 2 of us and occasional interested friends who want to shoot as an additional unofficial tog.
- Afterward, we give them all reasobable photos/proofs on a CD that are 1100 long edge and 100 dpi (ends up being 600-800)
- They choose to 150 which we give them at 300dpi, original size, for large printing and try to accomodate any PP requests (eg. fix my hair in this shot, remove that car there etc).
- We only provide prints at request as an additional cost. We dont offer an album.
I've posted some of the examples of weddings we've shot (admittedly still a skill in evolution) for the quality (we give a link to examples of our previous work in galleries on our website). I don't rate ourselves as being glamour photographers -and that is what we tell our clients.
We both have day jobs that support photography as a hobby and most of our work has been through word of mouth spreading from friends / friends of friends etc. In other words, what we actually get paid does not impact on our viability to do the weddings - we're only limited by how often we can actually shoot one due to work constraints.
As a ballpark figure, what would you be expecting to pay for that kind of 'service'