Thoughts on Choosing a Wedding Photographer

The wedding day will fly by in a blur (seriously, I felt like my day was 5 minutes long!) but you'll have all these amazing images that will last a lifetime, so please, choose wisely. Photographs, video's and memories are all that you will physically walk away from the wedding with, so make sure you do plenty of research on your photographer and *try* to not skimp on the budget here. You want to look back at your images years later and fall in love with the whole day over and over again.

Luckily, with the Internet most photographers have a wealth of images for you to check out online. But, don't hire site unseen (this is applicable to all your vendors, meet in person first, if circumstance allows), since this person will be following your every move on the day of, you want to make sure that you are comfortable not only with their images, but with them as well. Decide what elements of photographs you want: more candid, more details, more 'artsy' angles/poses etc. Do you want 1,2, or 3 shooters? How long do you want your photog on the wedding day? Standard packages are 8 hours which would include getting ready through the reception (either end or close to ... I suggest close to, pictures of drunk guests are not pretty). Do you care more about the actual images or albums? Do you want an online gallery that friends and family can purchase images through? Or, would you prefer to get all the proofs? What kind of album do you prefer? Make sure that the package you decide on holds everything in it that you want. Some photographers will negotiate, and some will not. Keep in mind that you want QUALITY over QUANTITY in this case. These are images you get to look at for years and years.



This post was originally published on June 16th, 2009