Ideal Budget for Wedding Photography?

It really depends on a few factors:
- Length if coverage
- 1 or two photographers - What else is included (online gallery, photo albums, etc)- Their style
I am paying $5000. I found cheaper, but I really love their style (photojournalistic). They offer full day coverage, online gallery, and album. There are cheaper options out there that I found to range from $2000-$3000. It also depends on your area. City photographers are typically more expensive than suburbs.

My photographer offers packages in the $4-5k range depending on the hours of coverage. According to my planner, $3.5-4K is common in this area.

Mine is like 3,500$
Pictures are a lifetime, you get what you pay for.

Ours was $2500-$3000 in the Cleveland area when booking in 2018 for a 2020 wedding. We ended up right in the middle around $2750.

If you're having a more traditional wedding and pictures are important to you, this is definitely an area to invest in. Photographers don't just take pictures -- they experience the wedding day with you and often help with the timeline and general flow of things.

I'd recommend a photography package with 2 photographers that includes an engagement session (so that you can get a feel for your photographer and make sure you're happy with their work), full day coverage (8+ hours), and a physical photo album if possible.

I am paying $1300! I think the reason it is on the lower side compared to what I am seeing here in the comments is that it is for a shorter amount of coverage. We are doing a 6-hour package. I just want the main things!

For our wedding, we had an overall budget then broke down our budget into categories and allocated x amount to each category based on research and what was important to us. However when it came to photography, I knew prior to even getting engaged what photographer I really wanted to capture our wedding. A friend of mine got married a few months before we got engaged so when I saw her pictures I was sold on that photographer. Thankfully, she was available and within our budget. She was also significantly cheaper than other photographers in the area because she was from out of town and she had only been in business professionally for about a year. We ended up picking her middle package and paid $2,300 which was her middle package. It included an engagement photo session, 10 hours of coverage on the wedding day, a second shooter, 30 prints of photos ranging from 4x6 to 8 x 10, a USB with all of our photos, an online gallery of all of our photos, and a wooden keepsake box. We could have spent an additional $300 for her top package which also included a 40 page photo album, but decided we would make our own photo album for our one year wedding anniversary.

We originally budgeted $3000 for photography, but ended up with a $4000 package for a husband/wife team whose photos were unparalleled to all the other photographers I vetted. It was a 10 hour package, included an engagement shoot, and a 10x10 album. Our package eventually changed to a 2 hour ceremony and portrait shoot and then a destination adventure shoot the following month for the same amount we paid (COVID threw a wrench in everything). We signed back in 2018, so I’d imagine their current prices are more in the $5-6k range, which I would gladly pay again in a heartbeat.

We had budget for $1100 but we end up paying $1400 for 7 hours, 11x16 pic, flash drive, second shooter, all pics of wedding (over 1500 pics) and a photo album

I found a great photographer for $1,200 for 5 hours. I did a ton of research in my area and found photographers for 5-6hrs range from $800 to $5,000. That's a huge range. Perhaps I'm just not picky enough, but if you showed me the $1200 photos compared to the $5000 photos, I can't really tell a difference.
I read that 10% of the overall budget is an average figure to put toward photography. I used that as a guide when meeting the choice.

We had a budget of $1,700 but ended up with $2,200 for a few reasons. The original price included an engagement session, two photographers on wedding day and six hours coverage. After our engagement session, I liked her style and pictures so much that we extended her coverage for wedding day. I know I’m going to love the gallery.

We didn’t really have a set budget, we just researched a bunch of different companies. i’m in michigan and i got a photography & videography package with 8 hours of coverage for $2000.

We didn’t really budget for this… our venue includes photography coverage but there’s tons of add ons. We are looking at about $3500 that includes coverage for 6.5 hours, one photographer one videographer, photo book, digital photos, 60-90 minutes video, & highlight video for social media.

We never really settled on a budget but it also depends on your location, coverage time and what they offer within the selected coverage time. We spent $4,500 for 10 hours of photo & video coverage. Not ideal but it was the timeline we needed. Since our original quote was for 6 hours (at $2,750), I'm not exactly sure what it all entails now but still excited either way. We've grown close to our photographer so we trust he'll send whatever is worth that price tag. We did get a free engagement shoot and WOULD HAVE had free streaming but it wasn't working out when they tried setting up so unfortunately we couldn't move forward with that.

When i looked at quotes i was seeing 2-3k as the average.

so i felt like anything UNDER 2k would be great haha.