Essential questions to ask your wedding photographer

When my wife and I were planning our own wedding, I was already a few years into being a wedding photographer and thought I had a pretty good idea of what to ask, things to pay attention to, etc. However, there were still a bunch of things that we flat out forgot to ask. Simply put - there are a ton of details that you need to put together in order to plan a wedding, even a small one like ours, and it can be REALLY difficult to figure out what to ask, or even remember what questions you need to ask.

So this guide is designed to help you out with that. In this guide, you’ll find a few questions that are paramount to ask your wedding photographer to make sure you get the right fit and get an idea of the value that your wedding photographer will bring. Additionally, you’ll also find some things to keep an eye out for that might be “red flags”.

The Basic Questions

Here are some questions to get you started, to get to know your potential wedding photographer before you get down to business.

1. How many years have you been photographing weddings or working as a professional photographer?

2. How would you describe your style?

3. What is the average size of weddings you shoot?

4. How many weddings do you normally do in a year?

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Questions About Packages and Offerings:

These are great questions to understand the value you’re getting with your wedding photo package. Whether or not something is “worth it” is entirely up to you, and there are certainly pros and cons to different offerings. Therefore, use these questions to get an idea of what seems “worth it” to you and go from there!

1. How much photography time is included in your package?

2. How many photos should I expect if I decide to go with this package?

3. Do you require a retainer/deposit? If so, how much?

4. How do you deliver your photos?

5. Do I get to keep my photos?

6. Will there be a fee to print or download the photos?

7. Can I print them myself or will I need to print through you?

8. How long will I have access to these photos?

Questions About Your Experience:

Hiring a wedding photographer is about much more than just getting some photos, it also plays a big role in your wedding experience. Here are some questions you can ask about what to expect from your wedding photo experience.

1. Does the amount of time included in your package include your setup time or will you arrive early to set up?

2. How long does it usually take for you to edit and send the photos afterwards?

3. From now until the actual date of the wedding, what can I expect in terms of communication and help planning from you?

4. Can I reach out to you for advice planning the day if it pertains to photogrpahy?

5. Are you familiar with the venue?

   1. Alternatively, if you don’t have a venue yet you can ask if they have any preferred venues. (Sometimes you can save a bit of money by using preferred vendors!)

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Questions to make sure you’re being protected:

I can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure that you’re being protected when you are working with any vendor or contractor. Literally anyone can market themselves as a wedding photographer, and while everyone has to start somewhere, there are a few things that every photographer should have considered or have in place to make sure their couples are being protected and to ensure a positive experience. Here are a few things that you should definitely ask your potential photographer:

1. Does your camera have dual SD card slots and the ability to shoot simultaneously? (THIS IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT!!!!)

2. How do you back up your photos after a wedding?

3. Do you have business insurance or some kind of liability insurance?

4. What is included in your contract?

5. How long will I have access to my photos?

6. If I happen to lose my photos, will you have backups of them?

I seriously can’t stress enough how important the first one is. SD Cards are relatively reliable nowadays, but they are still far from perfect. If your photographer shoots on a camera that only has one SD Card slot, there’s no way to shoot redundant photos. If that SD card happens to fail, your photos could potentially be gone. I’ve seen many horror stories about couples losing the entirety of their wedding photos forever and photographers going out of business because of situations like this - and you NEVER want to be a part of one of those stories. No matter if your photographer has been capturing weddings for a day or a decade, make sure their camera can shoot redundant photos to 2 SD cards.

Questions About Photo Quality:

This one might seem a bit niche, and you don’t need to fully understand all the details about photos in order to get useful information from these questions - all of these should be easily answered in plain, non-technical language and will give you an idea of the quality of product you’re going to get.

1. What camera(s) do you shoot on?

2. How large can I print your photos without losing resolution?

3. For dark environments, do you use a flash?

4. How much editing do you do to your photos? Do you generally do touch ups and a lot of photo manipulation or do you generally just adjust colors?

Of course there’s a bunch more questions you can ask, but these are great questions to get started. Hopefully this guide helped you in your wedding photographer search. If you’re curious how I would answer these questions, you can find a bunch of answers on my About Me page, or you can get in touch and I’d be happy to answer these questions for you!