How to hire a Wedding Photographer | Minnesota Wedding Photography
How to Hire a Wedding Photographer
Now that you're in the first stages of wedding planning, let’s talk about a few helpful hints to help you hire your wedding photographer. You want to find a photographer that will give you images that still evoke tears of joys on your 50th wedding anniversary.
Hiring based on price
You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, ads for Wedding Photography for $600.
Your gut should tell you that Quality Wedding Photography isn’t Cheap, and that Cheap Wedding Photography isn’t Quality. Still, there are numerous couples that go the ultra cheap route, only to find out after the wedding that the images are out of focus, or completely missed the mark in capturing the moments that you wanted to remember.
I see it all the time. Someone gets a nice new camera and decides to go into the wedding photography business. Generally, these are ‘hobbyist”. They usually have no wedding experience, no idea how to handle “snafus” that often occur on wedding days.
Usually wedding photography is about 20% of your total wedding budget. With a smaller budget, you might need to make some adjustment to afford a quality professional photographer. Remember, your wedding photographs will be one of the few tangible things that remain from your wedding day.
Hiring an Inexperienced Wedding Photographer
A truly professional Wedding Photographer has shot numerous weddings and has dealt with just about any wedding scenario under the sun. I started as an apprentice, with a highly respected Wedding Photographer. I learned to work under all conditions, rain, snow, bad lighting and what to do if the cake falls over before the couple even touches it! I learned how to work to capture memories missed by others. A GREAT camera in the hands of a novice will still give you images of poor quality.
This can also be said about having a friend or relative with a nice camera photographing your wedding. I’ve spent time with couples who were in tears because of poor quality or lack of wedding images (you would be surprised at how many couples don’t get their wedding images when they have a non-professional photograph their day). There is only so much that can be done to re-create a wedding day so a couple has at least something to commemorate their wedding day. Yes, I have helped couples to re-create images from their day.
Not taking the time for a face to face meeting
In this busy world, people more and more try to hire vendors based on texts or emails. Your first contact with a photographer shouldn’t be “what are your prices?” It should be, “when can we meet?”
You might like every image on this photographer’s website, but if you meet face to face and don’t like this person, do you really want to spend your wedding day with them? Your wedding photographer is likely to spend more time with you on your wedding day, then any other wedding vendor.. Make sure you like them!
Have that meeting, see their products, see if you “click”. Your photographer should be someone who cares about you and your visions for your wedding day. How awful to spend the day with someone who isn’t as passionate about your day as you are!
Only Wanting Digital Files
At one point, digital files were delivered on “floppy disks” Do any of you have a way to read them? Same can be said of disks. Most laptops don’t even have disk drives! I’ve even known of a few couples who have only digital downloads of their wedding images, and have lost them because they weren’t saved correctly or their computers have crashed. These couples have rarely printed images, and their plan to create their own wedding album, never happened.
Consider purchasing a wedding album from your photographer. Our Black Label and Platinum collections contain albums. There is nothing harder than figuring out HOW to work the website and software to design your own, and a professional photographer understands how to create an album that will beautifully tell the story of your day.
Finally, if this has been helpful, and you would like to know more about me and my team. Please be in touch. I’d love to sit down with you and help you plan and photograph your wedding day. You can fill out the form on my “Contact” page or text/call me at (952) 288-8617. We can schedule a time to meet and see if we click.
