We’re only in July, but I’m already looking at 2017. As of right now I’ve got one 2017 wedding with several other possible ones. I’ve got a bridal show coming up in August, so I imagine I will be talking to a few hundred 2017 brides. Since I’m changing from just doing this as a part time gig to a full time thing, I’m thinking about changing my 2017 wedding photography packages into something new.
2017 Wedding Photography Packages
Over the last 8 years or so of being a wedding photographer, our offerings have evolved. When we first started out, all our packages included two photographers (me and my wife) and I gave the client of ton of digital files. Besides that, I think I threw in a photo slideshow with music. Things changed when we had our son Holden. My wife was much more interested staying home with our son, so I started shoot by myself. Honestly I think this was good for me. It forced me to do everything myself and only rely on myself instead of having a backup. Around this point, I started offering albums with a few of my packages, but I was still mainly a digital file person. I think it was a year ago, I changed our package quite a bit. The next big change was adding videography into our world. This was a game changer. We’ve averaged about 10-15 wedding videos every year. Last year I made another change. I went to more of a hybrid package. All packages came with an extremely nice album, and I dropped the number of digital files to something much smaller. This leads me to this year.
Deciding on packages is a very complicated matter. There are ton of opinions out there and it’s hard to know what people want. Very rarely do people tell me what they think about the packages. A few years ago I was offering only 4 hours and most people didn’t like that. I think that was the only time I heard a clear opinion from a lot of people. If I knew exactly what everyone wanted, it would make life easier.
It seems like people really want digital files, but I don’t know if that’s really what’s best for all the brides. From my experience, most people don’t do anything with their digital files once they get them. They might post them on Facebook the week after, but that’s about it. I know I personally have no idea where our disc is, but I do see our giant canvas print every single day. I’m considering moving more toward the print world with my 2017 packages. I would still offer some digitals, but I think I would like to make prints a larger part of the package. I might have a certain number or prints or I might just say you have this much to spend on prints. This way, people are invested more in the prints.
I might also do less with our videos. Right now, every package comes with two videos. That might be more than they actually need. I’m thinking about making it just one really awesome video. From what I’ve heard, a lot of people will pay for video and then not even watch it. That seems silly to me, but people do strange stuff all the time.
I have roughly a month to figure out what I’m going to do with my 2017 wedding photography packages. I might leave them the way they are or I might change it up and aim more for prints. If you have any opinion one way or the other, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to comment or shoot me a message.
