Expensive photography: worth it??

At the end of the day you are paying for someones experience. With wedding photographers especially, yes, you are paying for amazing photos but you are also paying for someone to be where they need to be exactly when they need to be there to capture special moments filled with emotion. Only wedding experience can do that for you. You are taking a lot of chances with things you can't recreate, things you only have one chance to get the perfect photo of. In my opinion spending the extra for an exceptional photographer is a no brainer, but it all comes down to priority.

We're trying to keep our wedding under 10k and we decided food, venue and photography were most important to us and things like flowers, decor, placecards, etc were unnecessary. we were willing to spend the 3-5k on the photographer because that's what we would have to look back on and didn't want to sacrifice. that being said a friend offered to shoot our entire wedding for free as long as we paid for her flight and hotel while she was in town. that was very generous of her but we were already willing to pay the cost to have a great photographer. go with what's most important to you even if it means you have to pull from the flower budget, etc.