6 Tips for Choosing Your Wedding Day Photographer
Look, I’ll be real with you. I’m not the right photographer for every single bride out there! Every wedding photographer has a special style, a unique personality, and a range of skill sets tailored to a certain type of bride. If you don’t spend time looking for the right photographer for you, you may end up hating your photos – and that would be a nightmare. As a wedding photographer and a woman who had her own wedding, I’ve compiled my 7 best tips for choosing the perfect photographer for your big day, so you can cherish the photos forevermore. Let’s dig in!
1. Let Your Budget be Your Guide
With hundreds and hundreds of wedding photographers in every state, it can feel impossible to even begin choosing yours. However, let the money move you! There are photographers with packages starting at $4,000 and there are photographers with packages starting at $400. The range is insane! Talk with your family and your fiance to determine what you’re willing to invest in your wedding photos, and then start your search. This will at least narrow it down a bit!
Setting your priorities will help you make budget decisions on what is worth the extra and what is not.
2. Consider Their Experience in Venues Like Yours
Lighting is everything. And the lighting scenario indoors is so different from the lighting at an outdoor wedding. If you think you may be interested in a certain photographer, look through their portfolio and make sure they’ve had plenty of practice at venues similar to yours. If you’re eloping at some scenic location, you’ll want someone who’s done those kinds of shots successfully before. If you’re getting married in a dimly lit church, that’s no easy setting, so choose a photographer who has proven capable of handling it. If you can’t tell, you can reach out and ask!
3. Ask to View a Full Gallery
Just like your friends’ profiles, a photographer’s social media only shows the highlights! Our profiles and portfolios are a best-of-the-best scenario. Sure, looking through our instagrams is a good way to tell if you vibe with our editing style, but you really need to see more than that to feel comfortable. Once you have a list of some photographers you like, reach out and ask them to see a full wedding gallery! You’ll be able to see the range of photos they are capable of taking during your big day, check out their posing/prompting style, and see if their editing is consistent across the board.
4. Ask About Their Shooting Approach
Trust me when I say that this is so important. Every photographer is different in regards to their wedding day approach. Some photographers are very involved – actively prompting the couple and the guests to get the shots they want. Others are more like flies on the wall, going for those candid moments.
If you want that direction throughout your big day, having your photographer be the kind who takes initiative to literally curate photographable moments may be the right move for you. If you’d rather not know they’re even there, having that kind of photographer could spoil your big day. Think about your wedding day, your venue, and your guests, and decide how you’d like your photographer to fit in. Then, ask questions to make sure you choose the right person!
Something unique about my approach to wedding photography is that I offer support and guidance to all my brides! Throughout their engagement and leading up to their big day, I send them valuable resources and try my best to help them get all their questions answered. If that’s important to you, get in touch with me!
5. Ask About the Delivery Time
How soon will you get your photos back? What about previews? The answers to these questions can vary greatly from photographer to photographer. It’s important to ask so that you have realistic expectations once your wedding day has come and gone. Will it be one month? Three? Six? Even if you don’t particularly care, you should still ask. It alleviates pressure for both you and the photographer.
6. Have Them Shoot Your Engagement Photos
When you think you’ve found “the one” (the right photographer for you), don’t go into it blindly! Have them shoot your engagement photos as a sort of trial run. This way, you can get to know them, see if your personalities fit well together, learn their prompts and poses, and see if their style is all you want it to be!
If you’ve already shot your engagements and are looking for a different photographer for your wedding, I strongly suggest at least doing a mini-shoot with the potential photographer. At the very least, meet up with them for coffee! There’s no reason to meet your photographer for the first time on your big day.
Want to have an engagement shoot or a coffee with me?
I’d love to meet you, show you more of my work, and answer allllll the questions. Reach out and we’ll get something on the calendar!