One of the things we often hear remarked about, online and off, is how expensive wedding photography is. There does seem to be some disconnect between what people think wedding photographers charge based on their day rate, and the actual amount of work that goes into producing a set of wedding photos.

In 2024 The Average Price For Wedding Photographers Is Between €2000 And €4000

Aside from region (city/rural/Dublin) the other things that can affect wedding photography prices depend on what the photographer’s fees cover:
- how many hours photography are required from start to finish
- is there one photographer or two
- is there an album included or just digital image files
- are travel expenses included
- is the wedding photographer experienced or relatively new
- is VAT included

The above fees are averages, so there will be plenty of photographers charging less and some who charge much more. Like anything else, demand and supply determine prices … well, that and professional ego, or maybe a smidgen of cowboyism from chancers who will undercut everyone and not care about quality. Let’s stick with something along the lines of an experienced wedding photographer with good reviews charging a price of €3000 to shoot from Bride’s prep to first dances.

For us, we begin 2 hours before the bride leaves for the ceremony. Jill would go to the bride and I would go to the groom. Typically that can mean we’re photographing from 11.00am in the morning up until 10.00pm in the evening, sometimes later. So, an 11 hours of wedding photography, which most photographers tend to shoot on their own, although a growing number of wedding photographers shoot as a couple. Throw in 1 hour of travel time there and back on the day.

That doesn’t sound so bad: €3000 for 12ish hours/one long day’s work.

Except, wedding photographers know that actually taking those wedding photographs is only a small part of work they will have to do for each couple they work with. Taking the photos is by far the most enjoyable part of being a wedding, but it’s only a fraction of the work involved.

Working for yourself, your first role as a wedding photographer is to generate sales - no sales, no wedding photography, no business being in business. Invariably that means having a website at the very least and spending on average about a day a week either updating it, promoting it, doing SEO, blog articles, or working on social media and various other marketing endeavours, like wedding fares, advertising, promotional work, etc. This is all work, and it has to be done.

Then there’s meeting the couple, which we try to do here at the studio if possible. If all your marketing efforts work, and you’ve got a potential couple as a client, you still have to make the sale - couples have to buy into the way we work, and we have to feel like we’re the right fit for them.

Aside from family and friends, photographers and videographers are the people who will be with couples throughout the day, from prep to ceremony, and right up until the dances. Typically we’ll shoot between 4000 and 6000 images at a wedding between us. These images won’t sort themselves out. It takes me a day, sometimes two days (usually towards the end of the season, when I’m crushed), to edit 5,000 down to maybe a working selection 400/600. Let’s say 1-2 days to edit a wedding down, and then another 1-2 days to process that final selection of images, and another day to do any final fixes.

Now you wedding day takes up: an initial consultation; a follow up contact closer to the wedding date; putting together a shooting schedule for the day; photographing the wedding; editing 5000 or so images down to the best 500 or so; processing those images to get the best from the camera RAW files; converting a selection of wedding photographs from colour to black and white; sequencing two sets of images to tell one story; sizing everything as High Resolution JPGs for prints, and Low Resolution JPGs for sharing and viewing online; setting up a meeting so couples can view their photos and collect their files.

That wedding photographer’s fee doesn’t just cover the 6-12 hours of wedding photography, it covers all the work before and after the wedding day. A wedding is really about 4-6 days work from the initial contact with a couple to handing over their wedding photographs.

In Ireland if your photographer makes more than €37,500 they have to register for VAT and charge a standard rate of 23% on digital files, and/or a reduced rate of 13.5% on prints/albums/etc. So, up to almost a fifth of their perceived income may be made up of a government tax that doesn’t go to them at all. That €3000 average might include a government tax of €500 or so which the photographer never sees

To get to €3000 you charge €2439 + 23%VAT

You might think that sounds like a decent auld bit of crust to be earning, but most wedding photographers don’t earn that every week. According to Indeed.ie the average salary for a photographer in Ireland is €28,000, and the average overall salary in Ireland is €45,000. All in, it seems that wedding photographers in general are pretty much undervalued in terms of what they can earn from a wedding, and a lot of them need to have second jobs to make up the difference. While €2500 can seem like a lot for one day’s work, in reality it’s more like 5-7 working days of actual effort to produce a finished set of wedding photographs to a professional standard.

Remember too that weddings are seasonal - most of them happen between April and October, and even then not every photographer will have one every week - which means there’s really only 6-7 months of the year when wedding photographers can hit those targets, and within those 6-7 months the vast majority of weddings take place on Fridays and Saturdays.

Thankfully, we can limit ourselves to 20-25 weddings a year as our main photography work is commercial product and food photography here at our studio in County Dublin.

Additional Costs To being A Wedding Photographer

Travel
Most photographers don’t charge travel expenses, but fuel still has to be paid for and cars still have running costs.

Equipment
Wedding photographers shoot more frames at one wedding than most people shoot in a year. Cameras do wear out, as do lenses, and these have to be maintained and/or replaced every couple of years; most photographers carry a back up body. Me and Jill buy one new body each every two years, and a R5mkii costs €4500. So, €2250 per year comes out of any profits. We look after our lenses too, they last longer than bodies for sure, but there are still costs associated with maintenance. We use L series Canon lenses for the most part, and they start at around €2500. Quality isn’t cheap.

Insurance / Indemnity
All working photographers should have insurance and indemnity, wedding venues won’t let you work on site without it and nor will the OPW if you want permission to shoot in their parks. It’s a necessity, and it’s not getting any cheaper.

Put aside a couple of thousand for advertising/marketing, not to mention software fees, website/domain/email fees, membership fees to various organisations, courses, insurance and professional indemnity, etc. And this is all before getting into the costs associated with albums, prints, computers, or have a premises/studio.