Say Cheese!

I don't know if it's because I am paying attention these days, but it seems as though wedding photography blogs are everywhere.  I am at an age where a lot of my friends and peers are taking the plunge into wedded bliss.  After the big day of exchanging vows, brides and grooms promptly upload their wedding pics onto their Facebook pages for all their family and friends to see...  (with a photo credit at the bottom listing the name and website of their wedding photographer)

Personally, I love, love, love looking at people's wedding pictures!! I don't even need to know who the people in the pictures are! So, needless to say, when it was my turn to pick out a wedding photographer, I was excited to join the masses of newlyweds who are featured on professional wedding photographer's blogs and post my Facebook pics, with photo cred and all...

That is until I got the price list....  ouch.  Now let me just say, that the photographer I had in mind is a wonderful person and I believe wholeheartedly that she is charging market value for her services.  However, market value on wedding photography is insanely expensive!  Most photography companies charge anywhere from $3000-$6000 to spend the day with you snapping pics.  Unbelievably, this price tag does not even include prints of the photos, once you receive your disc of digital negatives, you can then pay more money to actually print the pictures you like.  That is a whole lot of cash for a few snapshots...

After receiving the shocking price package in my email inbox, I was left feeling a touch heartsick.  I had literally been anticipating hiring a wedding photographer for a time long before I was even engaged and now I felt I had a tough decision to make:  Follow the herd, and pay an arm & a leg for photos?  Or get creative?

I decided on the latter.

After brainstorming and wrestling with the wedding photography conundrum for a couple of weeks, I had an "a-ha" moment.  A close family friend of ours is a 25 year old artist, who holds a fine arts degree from U of M, with a major in photography!  She is planning on going back to school in the fall to get her education degree and become an art teacher.  Surely, a young artist in school could use a few extra bucks come September, right?!

I promptly sent the lovely young photographer an email explaining my predicament, and asking if she would do me the honor of taking our wedding photos...  She was a bit nervous in her response, having never been a paid wedding photographer in the past.  I explained that we are just looking for someone with a good eye and a decent camera to come out and have some fun with us.  After explaining to her that we are not looking for perfection, we just want to capture a few special moments and not feel as though we are being fleeced in order to do so.  She accepted!  Hurray!

The moral of this little wedding photography story is to be creative.  Just because all your friends and family are jumping off a financial bridge and paying through the nose for wedding pictures doesn't mean you have to as well!  There are all sorts of solutions to the wedding photography dilemma, you need only find the one that suits you best.  Perhaps for some of you with huge wedding budgets that is paying $5000 to hire a professional, maybe it's buying a whole whack of disposable cameras and letting your guests do the honor of snapping some shots, or maybe you too have a family member or friend who can share their talent with you for the day.  Regardless of what you decide, just be sure it matches how you feel you want the day represented, then you are surely going to be happy with your decision...  I know I am! :)

 A photo I took at my cousin's wedding two summers ago...