Wedding money saving

MORPH3US

digii_dave, do you have a website we can look at?

Miles16v

Thanks for all the replies and help.

Dave, I appreciate your thoughts and understand all the overheads.

I spoke to a few photographers at a wedding fair recently, and the cheapest anyone would do DVD only was around £500, which is for the main few hours of the day.

DVD only means no overheads, just time and use of equipment. £500 for 2 hours work seems excessive to me. My hunt continues!

o_t_e

Miles16v wrote: »

Photographers - I cant see how they justify charging so much. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm happy to change my mind, but from where I'm sat its not the hardest thing in the world to do, and overheads cant be that great with the advent of digital SLRs and third party printers. £600 a day for their time seems like a great deal for them! As for quality, I think that as long as you've got 5 or 6 really nice pictures that you can get framed or whatever then thats fine, the rest that they take cant be that bad surely!?

Hi Miles16v - just to offer some context (I'm one of those dreaded protographers) I charge around the figure you've quoted for a full day - 12-16 hours - and I then spend about 10 hours a day for a further 5 days processing images in photoshop. That works out at about £9 an hour - it's a pretty good rate but not exceptional; I know many photogs charge more than that but they may also be putting more time into post-processing of their wedding images.

I do take your point though - the guy that did my brothers wedding (I wanted to be in some photos for a change!) charged a figure for their wedding album that was 3 times what I know to be the trade price of getting the album produced.

What you might want to do is look on photography groups local to you on the flickr website - you need to be looking for people who have experience of taking good shots of people in low light and experience of using flash so that the images look natural ie not the 'caught in the headlights' look. I think you do need someone who has photographed at least one wedding before though so they know what to expect from the day. Good luck with your search.

val_84

Miles16v wrote: »

I'm getting married next year, and whilst I want a nice wedding I dont want to blow a load of money on a single day, unneccessarily. I dont know much about weddings.

I've booked a venue, which is a golf club where we will have the ceremony and reception. Cost is £500 for ceremony, £30 per head for meal, £10 per head for buffet, no charge for room hire.

So I'll be needing:

Photographer
Flowers - bunch for bride and bridesmaids?
Cake
Wedding Dress
Bridesmaids outfits
Groom and best man outfits
One car for bride
Rings
Table decorations
Invitations
DJ
What else?

If anyone can tell me what they spent on the above, and set me some challenging target prices it would be great. Hints and tips for doing it on the cheap!

I know I haven't given much detail, but think 'nice' rather than posh! I'd rather spend money on inviting more people or our honeymoon, than on extravegencies or unneccesaries that I can avoid.

Thanks!

Hi Miles,

Were getting married 15th August and this is what ive spent or been quoted for following:-
Photographer £360 as he doesnt charge for photo albums (this includes about 4 hrs I think and a copyright free disc of all our photos)
Flowers - bunch for bride and bridesmaids? Ive been quoted just under £180 but this includes a shower bouquet, 3 BMs bouquets, 1 flowergirl posey, 1 top table posey, 4 round table poseys and 8buttonholes) This is for silk flowers, I have a breakdown of exact amounts which I can give you but depends whether you want real or not.
Cake £75 for a plain white 3 tiered sponge from marks and spencers im going to decorate it myself)
Wedding Dress - My dress is £175 from ebay (theres a shop that does copies of designer dresses that has a fitting room in reading and the dresses are made overseas)
Bridesmaids outfits £60 each as above
Groom and best man outfits I think we are going to Moss Bros for these, If you get 4 people (maybe 5) to get their suits they give you the grooms for free
One car for bride This is costing us £200 for a 7 seater daimler for one trip as we are having both ceremony and reception at same place
Rings
Table decorations - as above for flowers then for night time as there will be more tables Im going to use the BM bouquets and a couple of tealights
Invitations - I made these myself and they only cost £50 for everything (I priced up a website and for the number we needed it was about £400
DJ - We havent picked ours just yet but it is about £100 as I think we can get him through a friend

I know there is a lot here but if you need anything else PM me and Ill let you know.
Other things you may need to consider are place settings, favours, gifts for BM and best man if your doing them, Wedding Jewellery, Shoes. Cant think of anything else at moment

MORPH3US

o_t_e wrote: »

for a full day - 12-16 hours

o_t_e wrote: »

I then spend about 10 hours a day for a further 5 days processing images in photoshop.

Please tell me you are joking..... :eek: :eek:

50 hours processing in Photoshop..... :eek:

MORPH3US

Val_84,

Whereabouts are you based and can you tell me which photographer you are using?

How can I find out more about the wedding dress shop in Reading?

Do you (or anyone else) know where I can get some ideas for invitation designs?

Cheers

val_84

MORPH3US wrote: »

Val_84,

Whereabouts are you based and can you tell me which photographer you are using?

How can I find out more about the wedding dress shop in Reading?

Do you (or anyone else) know where I can get some ideas for invitation designs?

Cheers

Were based in Liverpool. Im using avid photography http://www.avidphotography.co.uk/
(I cant give any opinions on this as I have only seen the website and Ive spoken to him via email and so far Im impressed. I found him through another thread on here and there was some really good reviews.

Dress shop is below
http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Sweetsend-Factory-Shop__W0QQ_armrsZ1
again all I can say is the correspondance has been good and Ive read their feedback and I found a review on hitched and they were very impressed.

I already had an idea of how I wanted the invitations. they are plain white A6 with dark purple ribbon in a bow on the side and a purple heart on a silver background. I will try take a picture and post it tomorrow if you want. Or the other thing you can do is just go onto any wedding site and see what theyve done. http://www.confetti.co.uk/ also has some good ideas

val_84

val_84 wrote: »

they are plain white A6 with dark purple ribbon in a bow on the side and a purple heart on a silver background[URL="http://"][/URL]

Sorry I just realised that I put A6, meant to say C6. lol. Had one of those days

o_t_e

MORPH3US wrote: »

50 hours processing in Photoshop..... :eek:

I guess that's a personal choice - I'd rather supply a set of images that I'm completely happy with than a bucket load of jpegs straight out of the camera; it's probably not a great business model though. The wider point is when you see a photographer charging, for example, £60 per hour of attendance at a wedding, it may well be that every image you'll get back from that hour has incurred a significant amount of additional work and time after the wedding itself. That said, if you look at a photographers images and don't think 'wow, uncle bob could never have done that', maybe they're not worth the money they charge.

MORPH3US

Thanks very much Val 84!!!

Would be great if you could photograph and post up the invitations.