So you’ve opened seventeen tabs, multiple different photographers offering so many differnt packages!!! Full day, 10 hours, 12 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, prints, film, video, content creators, super 8, 35mm film, a song and dance. ooft! What do you want Editorial, documentary, fun and vibrant, dark and moody, blury. I mean it’s overwhelming, it’s exhausting. Do you pick the person with more followers, who do you trust? One photographer charges $15000 another is charging $1500 from what seems to be the same thing. So why is wedding photography so expensive?

They promise 300-1000 photos how many do I need? Eventually wedding photography starts to look like a particularly emotional spreadsheet, you’re already exhausted. I get it! Weddings are expensive. Budgets are real. And when two photographers both appear to offer “full-day wedding photography + online gallery”, it’s completely reasonable to wonder what am i paying for!!!! arghhhhh Ok I’m going to try and break it down as simple and easy to follow….. I hope haha

What am I actually paying for? Why is wedding photography so expensive!!!!

Here’s the thing. I don’t think the answer is simply photographs.

The person behind the camera matters

No matter the size of the wedding to me it’s personal. By the end of the wedding day I’ve met your people, made friends with your guests (if your nana wants me to sit down and tell me her favourite of you, I am sitting down!!!). I once somehow ended up squished into the backseat beside a fluffy, drooly, overheating ring-bearer. Was it glamorous? Absolutely not. Would I change it Absolutely not.

Afterwards, couples always tell me their guests kept talking about how comfortable I’d made everyone feel. I’d felt like part of the family. This means an enormous amount to me, I get so emotioanlly attached, I’ve actually becomes best mates with some of my couples as we have clicked so well! Wedding photography is surprisingly intimate.

I’m there when your hands shake. When your mum sees you dressed for the first time. When Dad goes suspiciously quiet. When your child decides trousers are oppression. When somebody cries. When somebody needs help. When your entire family is standing in front of my camera waiting for you enter.

You’re inviting a person into all of moments

So yes, look at a photographer’s portfolio. But also ask yourself: Do I want this human beside me while all of this is happening?

You’re paying for someone who doesn’t panic when the plan goes sideways.

My most famous story is when a bride ripped her wedding dress not just a tiny tear I’m talking from hip to hip across the back…. vintage, lace yikes. Panic! Not me…. luckily I have some basic sewing skills, everyone was so frantic they couldn’t stay calm. I sat down took the dress and sewed it up.

I had a child that had an epic tantrum, was tired, hadn’t napped, didn’t consult the timeline!! haha no problem, I’ve got bubbles in my bag. Still not happy….. don’t you get stressed! Just breathe and take your time, if you’re stressed your child is stressed and it doesn’t help.

I want my couples to look at me and think:

Jenny’s got it.

Because if I’m calm, you get to stay present. And being present is where the good stuff lives.

You’re paying for someone who understands people

One of the loveliest pieces of feedback I’ve received came from a couple who said they felt like I really got them.

Not simply their wedding vibe. I GOT THEM. What mattered to them was their family, their ecosystem of humans. That’s important to the way I photograph. I don’t want to arrive with a formula and shove your wedding through it. I want to know who I’m looking for. Who gives the enormous hugs, who might cry, which relationships matter deeply, what you’re nervous about. What you absolutely don’t want your wedding photography to become. Because the better I understand you and your people, the better I can tell the story.

You’re NOT paying me to turn your wedding into my photoshoot

This one matters enormously. I will say it all photographers: YOUR WEDDING IS NOT A CONTENT DAY TO ME!! Yes I have to use social media as a tool, 90% of the time I forget to film content for myself that’s why I organise styled content days with other like minded professionals to get the content I need. I might sometimes film a few bts videos at your wedding but only if it doesn’t interfere with anything else!!!

You have spent months — sometimes years — creating this day. Your favourite people are all somehow in the same place at the same time. I don’t want to steal you away from them for three hours so I can manufacture a wedding that photographs nicely.

I want you to LIVE IT, breahthe it, soak in every wonderful moment! My background is documentary storytelling, which means I’m constantly looking for what’s unfolding naturally. But documentary doesn’t mean I’ll abandon you in a field and yell: “BE NATURAL!” haha it’s your wedding day it’s not natural, you don’t do this everyday, you don’t walk in a field at sunset every day…. do you? I guide you, I make you laugh, we have a chat an I can’t explain it but it literally happens like magic because I have skill in making you trust me and communicating.

When the light is glorious and I know exactly where you need to stand, I’ll tell you. When you’re wondering what on earth to do with your hands (jazz hands is best).

Gentle guidance when you need it. Space when you don’t. No awkward posing marathon required.

You’re paying for the things you didn’t know happened

This might be my favourite part. While you’re living your best life feeling like a fabulous celebrity, there are fifty other things happening around you on your wedding day that you don’t know about. Your nephew has decided to take a lick of icing from the cake, your friend is emotional, your grandparents are laughing, someone is holding hands. These tiny fragments become stories that will hit the hardest in years to come.

One of my couples said something that beautifully describes what I’m always trying to create:

‘She didn’t simply capture beautiful photographs. Jenny captured the atmosphere and emotion of out wedding’

That’s what it’s all about not just proof it happened, I want you to look at the photographs and feel you are transported back into that moment.

And yes, you’re paying for the WOW photographs too

I’m an enourmous romantic with a camera in my hand, I love rom coms I grew up with clueless, 10things I hate about you, Sleepless in seattle, Dirty Dancing, An affair to remeber, Breakfast at tiffanys, 27 dresses, gone with the wind (not a rom com put sooooo romantic)

Give me wild landscape, ridiculous light, wind, mountains, coastline, forest, ruins, wineries, funky streets of Edimnburgh or collingwood — I am going to make something bloody beautiful with it.

That’s the delicious contradiction I love, the tiny human moments AND the enormous cinematic ones. The tear rolling down Mum’s cheek. Then the photograph where you’re standing inside some spectacular landscape looking like the final scene of your own movie.

Epic meets intimate. Chaos meets magic. That’s where I live.

So… why do wedding photographers charge different amounts?

Because you’re not really comparing identical products.

Ok lets start what do you feel is a good salary to earn per hour? so for a average australian hourly rate for a professional is anywhere between $40-$100 before tax. So 12X80 = wait so that’s $960…. what’s the other $4000+ for!!! Well what you don’t see isn’t just on the day. Like everyone a photographer has expenses.

• Camera Gear Starts at $3500 just for a camera without a lens, we need a few incase one breaks
• On the day personal libility insurance
• Insurance for the $50k camera gear we’re carrying around
• batteries
• snacks
• Petrol for the car
• Insurance for the car
• Planning before the wedding
• Calls and email time
• travel time (some venues are a 2 hour drive each way)
• Editing time post wedding
• Then there’s the website hosting
• web designing
• Time it takes to market ourselves
• advertising
• Software licencing
• if you are having film photography there’s cost of film
• Tax
• GST
• Accountant fees
• realistically we only book roughly 25 weddings a year and they all happen in a 4 month window.
• Then there are paying bills in life food, electricity etc….

But it’s not just numbers you’re also choosing experience, judgement, emotional intelligence, artistic voice.

Preparation, consistency, the ability to read a room, the ability to make nervous humans comfortable, the ability to find beauty without manufacturing it. And the ability to stay calm when the carefully constructed timeline goes gloriously, spectacularly sideways.

Does that mean you should automatically choose the most expensive photographer?

God, no. Choose the person whose work makes you feel something, choose someone whose approach fits the wedding you actually want to experience, choose someone you trust, choose someone you can imagine standing beside you when things get emotional, ridiculous, chaotic and wonderful. So I hope this has helped explain why is wedding photography so expensive?

And if I’m your gal?…..

Helloooooo. ❤️

Come tell me your story.

Tell me about the two of you, the people you love, what you’re planning and the bits you’re ridiculously excited about.

Then we’ll work out the photography.

Because your wedding isn’t a package to me.

It’s a story I haven’t heard yet.

About the Author

Jennifer MacDonald at Liminal Wonderland loves anything sci-fi and re runs of Gilmore girls. Loves baking and Champagne. Jennifer spends her free time hanging out with her husband and toddler that keeps her active. Jennifer is a wedding photographer that travels between Melbourne and Scotland. She specialises in capturing artistic portraits paired with unique story telling.

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