Games people play...

Posted Friday, February 15, 2008 1:16 PM

I wrote a blog entry yesterday about one of Will's friends(Stephen), whom we were considering to photograph our wedding, then deleted it when I realized he isn't The One for us. He verbally quoted us a price of about $2,000 last year when Will talked to him.

Come to find out, Stephen will be raising his prices after the next wedding he shoots this year. His work is amazing, and Will and I love it...but after viewing the current prices on his website, we're not so sure we want to book him. We haven't spoken about it with him yet(he'd be invited to the wedding anyway; he's a friend of Will's), since we hadn't set anything in stone. He and Will don't talk often since Stephen travels, and works a lot with a non-profit group, so it might have to wait.

In the meantime, we'll look at other photographers. Actually, I have looked at other photogs, and I told Will yesterday that I'd been looking at others. I hadn't said anything about Stephen's prices because Will and I are making compromises, and Stephen is Will's buddy. If expensive photography was something he truly wanted, he could have it. (He's paying for a better chunk of the wedding anyway, and he's been more than gracious about the things I want so far.)

Bottom line: both of us realized Stephen's playing a game, probably seeing how high he can go with his prices. Something about that doesn't sit right with us, and I was really happy to hear Will agree. Stephen does awesome work, and he's even been published in Nat'l Geographic(so he says), but his prices are too much for us. Seems like he really does raise his rates after every wedding he works. Will told me they started at $600, when he shot his very first wedding. His packages range from $500(for videography only) to $2300 right now, and they'll only go up! (Of course, for us, travel costs would be included. How much? Of course he didn't say.

I know what you're all thinking: "She's really naive!" I know expensive work will happen with lots of photographers, but it sure is shocking when that realization hits you for the very first time! So..I started my search on The Knot again, and came up with at least three options starting under $1,000. All are around Central Florida, and after some serious gallery-viewing, and all do awesome work, right down to the funny pictures. (And I thought for a minute that Stephen was the only one who did those.) The best part? No travel fees! I was prepared for that with Stephen, since he'd be coming from Birmingham, but it's nice to find comparable shutterbugs who have much lower prices. We could, theoretically, pay much less for the same work, and use the "leftover" $$ for so much else!

Looks like there will be some redoing of our budget, now that we came up against this. We might or might not go with a photog under $1K; we'll have to do some research of ALL our options. I'm just happy to know that Will wasn't dead-set on $2K worth of pictures (and nothing else) after all. Like I said, we could use some of that money toward other features of the wedding. We'll just have to see what other options we have.