Weddingbee boards

Hi Ladies-

Just curious about the photography for your DW.  Are you having a vendor from home come with you, or will you be using a photographer from your destination?

If you are bringing one from home, who covers their travel cost?  I'm very curious about the whole process and would love to hear what you did/are going to do.

Thanks!

I think that it really matters on the photographer.  And what they are willing or not willing to do.  My fiance and I went to school in Orlando so right away we knew we would be going back to at least Florida for the wedding and I started looking at photographers in the area....found a couple I really liked and kept in touch with them about our plans.

When we decided that a destination wedding was the New change. I contacted the photographers explained what we would be doing and I offered to pay for the stateroom for 2 adults in exchange for a basic photo package of a comparable price.

A couple of the people right away said it was not possible for them to take the 4-5 days away of possible wedding bookings for just mine, while other asked for an additional fee and we went back and forth about the amount of photography that it would provided.

After a couple of days work we secured a physician in the Orlando Area who was willing to accept payment of a standard stateroom for the cruise for her and her husband and an additional $300--which we actually applied to the cost of having her 2 children join them on the cruise (they paid the remaining balance for the additional guests).  Grand total of about $1400-$1500 I can't remember off the top of my head.

For this we are getting 5 hours of photography on the day of the ceremony, a 30 page coffee table book, all of the rights to the photos, a viewing site for the family members and friends of all the photos.

All in all it worked out quite well. My photography option on the ship would have cost me $1000 plus the taxes any how and I would have used a cruiseline photographer not someone with great skills that shoots weddings on a regular basis.

Ask around.  Tell the photographers you like what you are looking for, the worst thing that happens is they say no, what's the hurt in trying?  Good luck!

Thanks for the help with this!  We are looking at three options (yep, its so much fun pricing out three different things): Capri, Hawaii, or f'it we'll just stay at home.  I dont really want to pay for the photographers travel which we wouldnt have to if we went with a local Hawaii vendor, but we probably would bring our own to Italy.  It would really kill me to pay for the flight/hotel for the photographer... it's like a free vacation for them. 

Another question... those who are paying for air/hotel, are the photographers charging you the same rates or giving you a discount because they are getting a free trip out of it? 

We are paying for 2 photographers to come with us for a week to Malaysia.  Since they are rather new to the business, they are doing it for cost of travel only (flight tickets, hotels and food).

Plane tickets will be between $1-2k each! but! Lodging/food is very inexpensive due to the exchange rate (I think $1 = 3.75 there), AND for us to get regular wedding photography for 8 hours in the DC area we can easily pay $3-4k. We'll get a weeks worth of photos (they said they'd shoot the whole time) for about the same cost.  This is great for us since we need to do various smaller Hindu ceremonies before the actual wedding, and now we'll have nice pictures!

I also don't want to have to track down a photographer half way around the world to find out when my pictures will be ready :D