Fee for Engagement Picture Location?

Ummm wow! I think that's ridiculous. If it were me, I would look elsewhere just out of principle. But everyone says if there's a problem to just throw money at it?

Is it a private garden? I mean, I've never heard of that before, but I think it's legal if it's a private location. It's not in their best interests, of course.

Hahaha. That's pretty much all a wedding is. Regular price: $15. Wedding Price for the exact same thing: $1,500. Lol. It's obnoxious. But I'm really annoyed and kind of giving up. FH said we should just not reserve the gardens and go and take it elsewhere in the park (there is a willow tree with a bench underneath and has a pond in front that FH would love a picture under) but then he said that the gardens will look a lot better than just a bunch of trees, so maybe we should do it. Our engagement session is only $150. So seems kind of silly to pay $250 for that. I just didn't know if it was common. My photographer said it is common in some locations.

Its ridiculous...I wanted to take ours at this awesome location that had a bit of everything on it from greenery to water (actually an island) to skyline background...the island recently was switched over from a city property to a state park and when I found out it was $750 for a photo session, I was crushed!!!

There was also another place I wanted, its a beautiful house and property with gardens that used to belong to the Ford family that charges $500 for only 2 hours for epix and goes up to $750 for wedding photos!

I'm looking elsewhere but I just can't find anywhere that will look good. The pumpkin patches will all be picked over by the time we are back from France. I wanted to pick a place that related to us, not just a random park that we've never gone to before and never will again in the future. This is really difficult to decide.

Hah, Maltese, you're from Michigan? I'm originally from Michigan.

I Janeen...yes, I am...Just outside of Metro Detroit...I wanted to take photos at Belle Isle soooo bad but when I saw the cost, I didn't bother even letting FH know and just pouted

That's stupid. I've never heard of a place charging for pictures. What about going to a park instead?

I think you can find a place - keep looking. Where did you guys have your first date? E pics don't have to be all about gardens...we're going downtown to the baseball field and a bar to take some of ours because that was our first date, then a farmers market bc i think they are juts cool and have lots of things to incorporate. You can always bring flowers, balloons, etc with you to liven up the pics. It will all work out.

I left Michigan 6 years ago, so this was before this wedding. I ended up getting my e-pix at Metro park on 16 mile at the recommendation of the photographer. This time, I just asked a local vineyard that I regularly go to if they would mind. She didn't as long as she got a couple of the pictures and I bought a bottle of wine! lol

I wanted to take pictures at a carousel park and they charged $100 for an hour. I don't think it's uncommon, but it sucks and I turned that option down.

I'm not too far from Metro and neither is the wedding...thats where we are thinking for photos after the wedding.

We met online and had our first date at The Cheesecake Factory. Not taking pictures there. Lol. We don't even really like the place. We don't do the same thing more than once, except a couple bars. Which, I don't think we should take engagement pictures at a bar. We aren't into sports, so taking it at a stadium is not important to us in the least bit. So I thought pumpkin patch would be great because I LOVE Halloween. But every place I emailed said by the time we were available, they would be all picked over and the vines would be dying. We both love the look of trees in the fall, so that's why I figured we could just do a park. Maybe we'll just pay the $10 admission per person to this park and not tell them we are taking engagement pictures. The fee is to reserve the gardens. So if we only use the gardens for a couple minutes and everywhere else longer, I don't see why we should have to pay the fee since we don't need to close anything down. She said it's the same rate if we were renting it out per hour to hold our wedding there.

Sounds like a plan.

Yeah that sounds like it works!

Maltese--there are some great places to takes pictures and my engagement pix were taken in May so it was beautiful there.

Every place we called charged a fee. How it was explained "If you are taking professional pictures and your photographer brings his equipment, staff has to make sure any and all cords are covered so the other guests won't be injured." Because we cut costs, we are not doing engagement photos. Our photographer is okay with it (it's included in our package) and is going to include that hour into our photos for the wedding.

I had to pay for the location to take my bridal pictures. I had them done at Tryon Palace. Normal admission is under $13. The fee to take pictures was $100 for gardens and $200 for garden and inside the palace. BUT, we were able to go after hours (no visitors gawking) was accompanied by a guide to every location, and got to go into some restricted areas. It was worth the money for me.

My SIL had to pay a whopping $500 to have her bridal pics taken at her venue. Crazy.

I love the pumpkin patch idea! You can get creative. Some of the best I've seen are couples in the city or in a park.

It's normal here. They charge for you to use their venue as a backdrop. There have been couples in my area who have tried to get around the whole paying issue but they will ask you to leave if you don't pay the fee. It's not really easy to hide what you're doing when you have a photographer in tow.

Has your photographer suggested anything to you yet? Our photographer gave us a list and pointed out locations that did require a fee. We decided it was a waste of money to pay $100+ on top of our engagement photo shoot cost just for a particular location. We ended taking our photos in the gardens of a historic estate. It doesn't matter that we don't have a "connection" to it...our photos were gorgeous and WE are the ones in them so they are special just because of that.

That is pretty normal here. 250-300 to rent any of our photo venues.