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Requests For Cheaper Wedding Photos

Looking around the Facebook Swap Sites, I often see requests for cheap or inexpensive photographer options for their wedding.

This is a valid request as photographers can be fairly pricing, easily ranging from the low $1,000 range to the high $4,000 range.

For couples on a tight wedding budget, this can easily break the bank and throw the budget out the window.

** NOTE: Before I go into describing a good, cheap solution for getting cheaper wedding photos, I must stress that I would recommend hiring a professional photographer for your wedding. The reason is that they do more than just take photos, (as much as videographers like myself hate to admit it) they are the director of your day. Without a photographer running the show, your day can easily get off track. If you decide to use our cheaper solution below, I would recommend finding a bossy bridal attendant that can not only help you get ready for your day, but is also willing to be bossy with your wedding party, family, and even guests to keep the day on track.

The “Cheap” Solution For A Wedding Photographer

Here is my proposed cheap solution for getting great wedding photos without breaking your budget.

STEP 1: Network amongst your friends and family and see who has an aptitude for taking pictures. You are looking for someone who doesn’t yet have a professional camera, but has good composition in the pictures that they take (even if they are just cell phone pictures).

STEP 2: Contact this person and see if they would be interested in taking photos at your wedding. If they post a lot of pictures (other than selfies) and seem to like photography, they will likely agree. The beauty of this person is that they are not professional, so they will not charge a ton of money, if anything at all.

STEP 3: Once you get an agreement from this friend or family member to take photos at your wedding, head over to Amazon and buy a Nikon D3400 DSLR Camera Kit.

This kit will run you about $560, less than half of what you will pay for most “cheap” photographers. It is also one hell of a camera for the money, coming with multiple lenses and a 24 MegaPixel quality. We use this camera for our side projects, and it is awesome.

It is important to get the kit over just the camera. The kit comes with multiple lenses with varying zoom lengths, 2 SD cards to store tons of photos, and a mountable flash.

Click Image to see Camera on Amazon

STEP 4: Once you get your camera in the mail, give it to your designated photographer to play around with for several weeks to a month before your wedding. Tell them they need to be able to change lenses, zoom in and out, work the different photo modes (if not learn the manual setting for best results), and to show you some practice photos of people.

STEP 5: Have your wedding and tell your photographer to take a bunch of photos so you will be able to pick and choose the best later.

*General rule of thumb is that you get 1 great photo for every 10 taken, so tell them not to hold back on smashing that shutter button (within reason, of course).

STEP 6: After your wedding, either give the camera to your designated photographer as a gift, or sell it and recoup some of your money. This money can then be spent on professional editing of the photos, paying the friend who took the photos a little something, or to add back to your bank account. You can also keep the camera yourself and take some awesome photos of your honeymoon, married life, future children, etc.

You can also get into wedding photography with some practice, because you can make a good living that way!

Additional Tips & Advice

  • Professional photo editing can be accomplished yourself with a free program called GIMP. The site has tutorials on how to use it, so you don’t even need to know what you are doing to start.
  • An extra purchase that may be a good idea would be a couple extra SanDisk 32GB SD cards. They are relatively inexpensive, and you don’t want to run out of storage space for photos half-way through your wedding day!

Any other ideas on saving money on wedding photographers?

Sound off in the comments below!

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