How to Price Wedding Photography

Ask ten wedding photographers how they set their prices and nine will describe some version of the same method: they looked at what other photographers in their city were charging and picked a number slightly below the middle.

That is not pricing. That is a survey with a discount attached.

The problem with copying the photographer down the road is that you have no idea what their costs are, whether they are profitable, or whether they are quietly subsidising the business with a day job. You may be benchmarking against someone who is losing money.

Start from the hours you actually work

A wedding is not an eight-hour job. Before you can price one, write down every hour it really takes:

• Enquiry, calls, and email back and forth — 2 to 4 hours
• Contract, invoicing, and planning — 1 to 2 hours
• Travel to and from the venue — 1 to 3 hours
• The day itself — 8 to 12 hours
• Culling and editing — 10 to 20 hours
• Delivery, gallery setup, and client follow-up — 1 to 2 hours

For a typical full-day wedding that lands somewhere between 23 and 43 hours. Call it 30 as a working figure.

If you charge $2,500 and it takes 30 hours, you are earning about $83 an hour before a single cost comes out. That number is going to fall.

Then subtract what it costs you to be in business

These are the costs people forget, because they are annual and the wedding is a single day:

1. Gear depreciation. Bodies and lenses do not last forever. A $6,000 kit

replaced every four years is $1,500 a year.

1. Insurance. Liability and equipment cover, often $500 to $1,200 a year,

and many venues will not let you work without it.

1. Software and storage. Editing software, cloud backup, your gallery and

business platform.

1. Second shooter. If you use one, this is a real per-wedding cost.
2. Marketing. A website, a domain, ads if you run them.
3. Tax. Set aside 25 to 30 percent. It is not your money.

Say your fixed annual costs come to $6,000 and you shoot 20 weddings a year. That is $300 per wedding before you have bought a coffee. Add a $400 second shooter and you are at $700 in direct costs.

Now that $2,500 wedding is $1,800 across 30 hours, or $60 an hour — and then tax takes roughly a third of it. You are at about $40.

If the number you land on is lower than what you would earn doing something easier, that is not a sign you are bad at photography. It is a sign the price is wrong.

Work backwards from what you need to earn

This is the part most people skip. Decide what you need the business to pay you in a year, then work out what each wedding has to be worth.

Suppose you want $60,000 a year and you can realistically shoot 20 weddings — that is roughly two a month in season, which is a genuine full workload once editing is counted.

• Target income: $60,000
• Plus fixed costs: $6,000
• Plus tax at 30 percent: roughly $28,000
• Total to bring in: $94,000
• Divided by 20 weddings: $4,700 each

That is your number. Not the one the photographer down the road is charging.

If $4,700 feels impossible in your market, you have three levers and only three: raise the price, shoot more weddings, or cut costs. Most photographers reach instinctively for the second one, which is how people end up shooting 40 weddings a year and burning out by 35.

Do not compete on being cheapest

There is always someone newer who will do it for less. That is a race with no finish line, and the prize for winning is a diary full of clients who chose you on price and will leave the moment somebody cheaper appears.

Compete on the things that cannot be undercut:

• Speed of delivery. A three-week turnaround when everyone else takes three

months is worth more than a $300 discount.

• The experience. Clear communication, a contract that makes sense, a

gallery that is genuinely a pleasure to use.

• Being easy to work with. More referrals come from this than from any

portfolio.

Raise your prices before you feel ready

Nobody ever feels ready. The signal to raise is not confidence, it is demand: if you are booking most of the enquiries you get, you are priced too low. A booking rate near 100 percent means you are the cheap option.

Raise by 10 to 15 percent and watch what happens over the next ten enquiries. If you still book most of them, do it again. Existing clients keep the price they signed at — that is what the contract is for.

The short version

Work out your hours. Subtract your real costs. Decide what you need to earn. Divide by how many weddings you can shoot without hating your life. That is your price.

Then hold it.