How Much Should You Charge To Shoot A Wedding

This is a free lesson excerpt from Fstoppers' comprehensive wedding photography tutorial: How to Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer.

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[ronvillarrealphotography]

The big take away for me was confidence. Whatever you decide to charge, be confident in the decision. Thanks for sharing.

[scottbutterworth]

This is great. For those of us who are just breaking into the realm of professional photography and weddings this is priceless information. Thanks for posting!

[DeaqonJamesLV]

The problem with this is that so many people are extremely confident about their ability when they can't even tell the difference between an F-Stop and a Bus Stop! Too many charging when they need to spend their time LEARNING and acquiring a skill set.

[mark_wangerin]

I've been shooting weddings since 1995 and EVERYTHING these two are saying is absolutely true!

[five_star_images]

Wow. I really enjoyed this, done multiple weddings and I’ve been struggling with how to appropriately charge, makes much more sense after watching this. Thanks.

[rbfilmstudios]

This was the best video on weddings and pricing, period. Thank you for sharing your knowledge

[wendystumbaugh]

This was AMAZING, Lee and Pat!!! Holy cow!

[tyoptix]

Even almost 5 years later, all of this advice stands true. Love everything you guys said.

[chrisogrady]

If you're going to sell/give away digitals, have a logo in the corner and encourage them to share them on social media but not print them. You get all the printing money without them doing it themselves and messing up your work, leading to others judging you based on creative decisions/mistakes made by the client. But you also still get the free advertising of social media sharing

[thebabygiraffebusiness]

This was amazing. Not everyone is cheap— some people go into debt for this day. And some people make more in a day than I do in a year. So don’t cheapen yourself! 👍🏼

[karlcassion]

Wow, this is great! I learned so much from this video! I am just starting with photography because i'm starting to get sick of my 9-5 job. I didn't even know where to begin charging people. This helped a lot! Thank you!

[Hokie]

As a self employed architect, excellent business advice. Rarely do I see anyone give advice so honest and strait forward AND useful! Most of the time the advixe is so generic that there is no value. It is much to vague. Your advice applies to many service style businesses. Great stuff!

[FrederickDunn]

20:15 you are exactly right there! Learn to put a cap on the number of weddings you accept and leave yourself some breathing room. We try to close the wedding schedule around 32 weddings per year. When you find your schedule full and that you're turning away many wedding requests, then consider raising the price point on your work. I personally just wouldn't be comfortable at all asking someone to pay, even if they would, 3-5K for my photographic services. I still have to feel that I'm providing a decent value for what I'm doing. This is a very helpful video tutorial, there are indeed photographers who are pricing themselves right out of the profession with high package prices. Be careful there, inching your prices up year by year is better than having to fall back and lower them later on. If people say wow, I remember when that photographer only charged $300.00 for a wedding and now it's $2, 050.00... good for him/her. BUT, if you used to charge $5k for a wedding and now you've fallen back to $1, 500.00 to make ends meet, it's a different message that may send clients to other shooters! Thanks guys, lots of great points!

[dob]

Woa, I can't believe how much money Americans are willing to spend on a wedding! Totally different situation here in Europe

[Osmien]

Ive been shooting weddings for 10+ years, and this vid is 101% on the mark about everything! great share...

[misternikon]

With all types of photography I've found there are 2 types of people. For low priced wedding photography, the people WANT what they pay for. For high end wedding photography the people will PAY FOR WHAT THEY WANT. This is true with every purchase of services and items.

And thanks for this video, it's great.

[emilygrace]

While I don't care for this guy in general, he definitely has some excellent thoughts and ideas. Great video Lee!! Thank you!!

[willparsons]

When I first picked up a digital camera (Nikon 5700 power shot) I wanted to shoot what ever I could to make a few dollars on the side... Soon after hearing how so much money could be made by shooting weddings I was all "ears" on how to...Then I decided "No way!" All it would take is to mess up a few shots and that's it...your reputation is down the tubes!" Several years later, a real DSLR and some serious lenses within my arsonal, I am reconsidering this style of photography..
After listening to your rant, I have taken a few more serious thoughts about it. Not having a base price or charge on what I would charge, listening to you say a few key words, I feel a bit more confident.
Thanks for your video - Awesome stuff!! :) :)

[diegopisante]

Hey Lee, this information help me a lot, I'm recently moved in to NJ from Brazil and I trying to find myself about how much to charge, and now I have a better start point....great job you are doing on Fstoppers.

[BrianNelsonFilms]

This was a great video! So much great insight and really helped me think about pricing in a totally different way