Why Weddings are so Expensive | The ‘Wedding Tax’ Explained

You might have come across saying that sounds somewhere along the lines of, “When you inquire with a vendor, tell them your event is a gathering or celebration, not a wedding”. The saying goes that vendors will inflate their prices if the event is a wedding vs. an ordinary event. “Oh this venue is for a wedding?”, “This is bridal bouquet?”, “Ok, then the price is X% more”. This is what the ‘wedding tax’ refers to. Your quote will be higher if the service/product you’re requesting for is specifically for a wedding.

As a Seattle wedding and portrait photographer, I offer both portrait and wedding packages, and used to price my packages equivalently because I didn’t believe in the “wedding tax”. I used to think the wedding industry was a “scam”. Then after working in the industry, I’ve come across why and am here to share some insight. Spoiler alert: the wedding industry isn’t trying to scam you.

This article focuses more on a photographer’s perspective, since that is my vendor category and can speak to it with more detail. I handle my wedding clients and portrait clients A LOT differently. Here are 4 reasons why I need to price myself higher for wedding packages, than portrait packages.

1. There are a lot more steps involved

The standard workflow for my portrait clients is receiving an inquiry, sending over some information, booking, shooting, and delivering the gallery. For my wedding couples, I get an inquiry, many times need to follow up multiple times because ghosting is very common in the wedding industry across all wedding vendors, I schedule a zoom or in-person pre-wedding consultation session, which can last anywhere from 45 mins – 2 hours, answer additional questions, then book only a percentage of those client. For the couples who do book, we have numerous e-mail exchanges for me to get to know them better, what they like, consult on their timeline, answer planning questions, and continuously build a relationship up until their wedding day. A few weeks before the wedding day, I have a check-in where we iron any last minute details, and my preparation involves studying the timeline and shot list. I don’t memorize everything to the detail, but I need to be familiar enough to know what’s going on at what time that I don’t need to look back at the timeline every 15 minutes, because I just can’t afford to do that on a wedding day. The remaining steps are generally the same with shooting, editing, and gallery delivery, but they do take more time, which I’ll get to later. Overall, the time invested to plan and execute a wedding is a lot more than a regular portrait session; the stakes are just higher with a wedding,

2. Weddings Require More Gear, Equipment, and Accessories

This is a good point we’re getting to: you don’t need to ask your wedding photographer exactly what gear they shoot with, but they SHOULD, at a minimum, have two camera bodies, each with dual slot SD cards. The industry standard workflow for wedding photographers is to shoot raw files to dual SD cards that are exact copies of each other, so in the event one card fails, you have a backup. This is a Wedding. There are no Re-Dos. I have personally heard of and read many situations where a photographer’s card failed, and they ended up delivering 3 usable photos to the bride and groom. That’s the end of it. There’s no going back. SD cards are expected to fail at one point in a wedding photographer’s career (think about how many weddings they are shooting per year, over how many years). Dual SD cards are a must! Two camera bodies are also a must! If one camera body fails, you still have another to fall back on.

We talked about camera bodies, now let’s talk about camera lenses. This is a bit more debateable, and I’m not going to advocate for wedding photographers to have a ton of lenses because you could get away with shooting weddings on one lens, although I would not recommend that (read more about lenses wedding photographers use here.) Generally speaking, wedding photographers are expected to carry and use more lenses (and better quality lenses) throughout the day. I myself have 5 canon L-series lenses (read more about canon L-series here), in addition to 1 backup lens. A wedding day is very dynamic; you’re shooting events, portraits, details, in various shooting situations, with varying lighting and space constraints, that might require the use of certain lenses. A good wedding photographer will be prepared with multiple lenses and use the best one for each situation. For portrait sessions, you could shoot the entire session on a single prime lens (I have done so myself with very positive client feedback). That just wouldn’t fly for a wedding day.

.Now let’s move to accessories. Wedding photographers need to carry *and learn how to use) flash, extra batteries, spare SD cards, those are minimum expectations. If something goes wrong, you need to have spares on hand so get can get right back to shooting and not having gaps in coverage. If I’m really getting into it, the SD cards need to be better quality and have faster transfer speeds. The batteries should be good quality and preferably not from a third party. I bring additional acessories that include a portable battery pack, multi-pronged charging cables, flat lay mats, and flash diffusers.

So more and better quality gear, equipment, accessories equals more capitol investment, more to insure, more to maintain/service, higher cost.

3. Weddings Require More Editing Time

Since weddings have so many different enviornments and scenes, the lighting situation for each of them is different, and more time is required to edit the gallery to ensure the gallery looks clean and consistent. I could breeze through a portrait session because the lighting scenario is very similar throughout. That just can’t happen with a wedding. the color toning, the cropping, exposure, black and white profiles can vary vastly throughout the entire day. There’s also a higher expectation on the quality for weddings. You expect the best of the best for weddings, I go through each individual photo to make sure it’s perfect. It’s not that I don’t do the same for regular portrait sessions, but the expectation of quality overall is just at a higher standard for weddings.

4. More Effort is Required to Sort, Deliver, and Archive the Gallery

Whenever I deliver a wedding gallery, I organize the photos into at least 10 different enviornments (details, first look, wedding party, ceremony, reception, etc.). This is all part of the client experience I deliver so that they are able to share select scenes with a select audience. This is a standard industry practice across the industry; not something “extra” that I do. I also archive the raw files and Lightroom catalogue for longer periods of time than portrait sessions. Again, because this is a wedding, I want to be able to deliver photos after a period of time if my client somehow loses them. This just doesn’t matter as much for portrait clients; they can always take another portrait session, but they can’t retake their wedding day.

Well there you have it. 4 detailed reasons why wedding photographers “impose a wedding tax”. It’s not that we want to, it’s that we have to. This idea can be extrapolated to other vendor categories. Wedding planners take more time planning the intricacies of a wedding than something like a company party. Wedding venues have more equipment to setup and breakdown and there are more moving parts. Florists have to ensure your flowers are at peak freshness throughout the day, Hair and Makeup have to ensure the bridal makeup lasts throughout the entire day; retouching may be required. The list can go on for each vendor category.

All this to say, the conditions for servicing a wedding requires more time, effort, is higher stress, higher stakes, and higher cost. In order to meet the highest standard of quality that is expected at a wedding, higher prices need to be charged. I’m sure we could charge lower if we wanted to, but your big day would be more prone to mishaps, delay in the schedule, and overall, higher chance of not going how you want it go. That is the last thing you want for your wedding.

SEATTLE WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

Still looking for your perfect wedding photographer? I am a Seattle wedding photographer local to North Seattle, and have numerous local connections to the wedding industry around the Snohomish area, including all over Snohomish County, King County, and the Greater Seattle Area. With a timeless, authentic, and natural photographic style, I tell your love story in a way that truly represents you. Send me an inquiry to find detailed pricing & availability information.

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