Wedding Reception Pictures: Ten Times More for Ten Times Less

“We got ten times more wedding reception pictures with our digital wedding cameras than we got from our wedding photographer, and they cost at least ten times less than our wedding photographers photos.”                 – Corina & Lincoln, Bride and Groom (Corina & Lincoln's Wedding Reception Picture Website)

Video: Corina and Lincoln's Wedding Picture Experience

Summary: Wedding reception pictures are a must have for many brides and grooms, but are often sacrificed due to cost. This article explores a new and more affordable wedding photography service that hopes to put wedding reception photography within everyone’s reach.

Read This If: You want pictures from your wedding reception, but do not have an extra $3,000 for pictures of your wedding reception.

Wedding Reception Pictures

You’ve spent months planning. You’ve spent anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000. You just heard your best friend promise to spend the rest of their life with you in front of everyone you love.

Now it is time to celebrate!

Ah the wedding reception. Arguably the most important part of your wedding day and unquestionably the most under photographed. Believe it or not, wedding reception photographs—i.e. the memories from the biggest party of your life—often get compromised because they can be expensive and can make guests uncomfortable.

Our job in this article is to make sure your wedding reception pictures do not get compromised, cost you next to nothing, and are a joy for your guests. In fact, when you are done reading you will know how to get about ten times more wedding reception pictures for about ten times less.

Why Wedding Reception Pictures Get Compromised

The best way to make sure your wedding reception pictures are numerous and excellent is to understand why they are so often scarce and poor. And the best way to understand why wedding reception pictures are so often scarce and poor is to understand how wedding reception pictures are different from traditional wedding pictures.

The first big difference between wedding reception pictures and traditional wedding pictures is that wedding reception photos are not included in most wedding photographers’ packages while traditional wedding photos are.

The second big difference is that wedding reception photos should be candid and of wedding guests while traditional wedding photos should be formal and of the bride and groom.

Difference 1: Wedding Reception Photos Are Not Included in Most Wedding Photographers’ Packages

Wedding photographers are expensive and charge by the hour. In fact, the average wedding photographer costs about $5,000 and that only covers them photographing four to five hours of your wedding day. If you don't have a calculator handy, that’s $1,000 an hour.

So if you want wedding reception photos, then wedding photographers’ $1,000 an hour price tag is critical to keep in mind when working through your wedding budget. For instance, your wedding budget likely has a specific line time for a wedding photographer but does not have a specific line item for wedding reception pictures. This means that your wedding budget assumes that your wedding photographer will take any and all of your wedding reception pictures. After all, the budget has one photography line item, so if you want photos, then the photos have to come from that one line item.

Unfortunately, assuming that your wedding photographer will capture everything from your wedding reception is where the wedding reception pictures problem starts, since most wedding photography packages do not include the photographer staying for your reception. Without coverage of your wedding reception included, you will have to pay for three to five more hours of the photographer’s $1,000 an hour time if you want them at your whole reception. Put differently, remember that that one photography line item on your wedding budget? It just doubled since you need to pay thousands more to get your wedding photographer to cover it!

Now before you go into credit card debt, put a second mortgage a house, or settle on not getting wedding reception pictures, here are twelve words that solve the problem:

Add a specific line item to your budget for wedding reception pictures

This new line item is critical because it lets you think outside of the wedding photographers’ $1,000 an hour box, budget your wedding reception photography separately, and not get stuck without wedding reception pictures.

And don’t worry. I am not going to tell you to write “four more hours of the wedding photographer’s $1,000 an hour time” on your wedding reception photography line item. But before we get to what you should write on your new line item, let's make sure we understand the second big difference between wedding reception pictures and traditional wedding pictures.

Difference 2: Wedding Reception Photos Should Be Candid and of Wedding Guests

Wedding reception pictures are all about capturing the biggest and best party of your life. To truly capture the biggest and best party of your life, you need to be able capture all of your guests partying.

Unlike traditional wedding photos which are all about predictable shots of the wedding party, wedding reception photos are all about the candid shots of all of your wedding reception guests. You have fifty to three hundred of the people most dear to your heart full of great food, free drinks, and joy, and now you want to capture that energy...this is a completely different world than traditional wedding photography. It’s not at all about knowing how to make the framing and lighting of the picture perfect. It’s all about being the right person and being in the right place at the right time.

Unfortunately, while wedding photographers are great at staging poses and getting lighting just right, it is nearly impossible for them to make all your guests feel comfortable or to consistently be in right place at the right time. Specifically, your guests will not know your photographer and therefore will likely not be 100% comfortable with your photographer taking their picture while they party like rock stars. This is not a criticism of wedding photographers; it’s just a fact. Wedding photographers are not to blame for not being everyone’s best friends…but it’s important to keep in mind considering that guests will pose much differently for a stranger than they would for their best friend.

Similarly, one wedding photographer can only be in one place at one time. Again, you can't blame the wedding photographer, but it is important to keep this pesky law of nature in mind as it makes it close to impossible for a wedding photographer to be in all the right places at all the right times.

For example, imagine that Uncle Steve hears “his song” and gets ready to give everyone the show of their lives, but then:

1. Your wedding photographer steps in front of everyone to get a good shot and freaks Uncle Steve out. Uncle Steve fades back into the crowd, and the moment is ruined.
2. Your wedding photographer is in the restroom and the memory is missed.

Unfortunately, both of these situations are nearly impossible to avoid with wedding photographers. How can one outside person know all of your guests and always be in the right place at the right time?! They can’t. But don’t lose hope. There is a way to get the right wedding reception pictures at the right times taken by the right people, affordably. And it is conveniently the same thing that you will put on the wedding reception photography line item that you added to your wedding budget. In fact, you can actually get ten times more wedding reception pictures than you’d get with a wedding photographer, for ten times less.

Ten Times More Wedding Reception Pictures for Ten Times Less

Before we discuss how you can get ten times more great wedding reception pictures for ten times less than a wedding photographer, let’s see what we would need for this claim to be true.

First, we are talking about wedding reception pictures, so we would need to know how many wedding reception pictures we could expect from a wedding, so we would need to know how many wedding reception pictures we could expect from a wedding photographer. Let’s be very generous (considering that most wedding photographers are not around for most of the reception) and say that the average wedding photographer will capture 450 wedding reception pictures. With this, whatever solution we have in store must be able to capture ten times 450, or 4500 wedding reception photos. That's the "ten times more" part.

 The second part of the claim is all about dollars. It’s the “ten times less” part. We need to know how much the average wedding photographer costs so we can divide that by ten. If you consider the true costs of wedding photographers (which consists of the cost of their time, the cost of buying photos from them, the cost of buying copies of your photos for friends and family, and the cost buying the rights to share your photos), the average wedding photographer costs about $5,000. With this, our wedding reception pictures must cost no more than $5,000 divided by ten, or $500.

With this data in front of us (4,500 wedding reception pictures for $500), let’s talk about how you can use digital wedding cameras to get more than 4,500 wedding reception pictures for less than $500 ($495 to be exact).

In short, you can get ten times more wedding reception pictures for ten times less with a digital wedding camera service because digital wedding camera services use picture taking, buying, and sharing models that are totally different than wedding photographers'.

Picture Taking --
Wedding photographers charge you per hour; digital wedding camera services do not. Wedding photographers rely on their professional expertise to get you great photos; digital wedding camera services rely on your guests’ personal expertise to get you great photos. Wedding photographers capture your wedding reception from one point of view; digital wedding camera services capture your wedding reception from ten points of view.

Picture Buying --
Wedding photographers charge you per photo; digital wedding camera services do not.

Picture Sharing --
Wedding photographers charge you for additional copies of your pictures for friends and family; digital wedding camera services do not. Wedding photographers charge you for the rights to share your pictures digitally (think email, Facebook, MySpace, etc.); digital wedding camera services do not.

Specifically, here's how digital wedding camera services picture taking, buying, and sharing models work:

1. You reserve your wedding date online and then a set of ten fully insured digital wedding cameras are delivered to you the day before your wedding reception.
2. You give the ten digital wedding cameras to ten trusted friends and family who candidly capture all the spontaneous moments from your wedding reception. (aka Picture Taking)
3. After your wedding reception, ship the digital wedding cameras back.
4. In about a week, in addition to gettinga CD of all your wedding pictures, you get a free wedding reception picture sharing website where you and your guests can view, download, print, and share all of your wedding pictures for free. (aka Picture "Buying" and Picture Sharing)

Video: How Digital Wedding Cameras Work

Video: How Wedding Photo and Video Sharing Websites Work

That was a lot to take in, so let's quickly review. Ten digital wedding cameras capable of taking over 450 pictures each is 4,500 wedding reception pictures. That is ten times more than a professional photographer’s 450 wedding reception pictures. In addition, renting digital wedding cameras costs a total of $495. $495 is ten times less than a wedding photographer’s $5,000 price tag. Put this all together and you get ten times more wedding reception pictures for ten times less.

What's more, with digital wedding cameras you have the right people taking them at the right time, and the answer to what to put on the new “wedding reception pictures” line item on your wedding photography budget.

Conclusion

Wedding reception pictures are critical to a good wedding photography experience, but traditional wedding photography does not do a great job capturing wedding reception pictures because of its picture taking, buying, and sharing models (one unfamiliar person, expensive, etc).

To address this, add an extra line item to your wedding budget specifically for wedding reception pictures and write "rent digital wedding cameras" on that line. Now you can rest easy knowing that you will get ten times more great wedding reception pictures for ten times less.

- Jonathan Bailor

PS You may also want to check out the handy Wedding Photography Quiz which helps you easily pick the best photography option for your wedding.

 

About the Author: Jonathan Bailor is the Managing Partner of the premier affordable wedding photography service CameraRenter.

© 2009 CameraRenter®, all rights reserved. Feel free to distribute this article exactly as presented here. You are welcome to quote the article if you link back to the original so that your readers can get more information if they would like to.