How to Start a Wedding Photography Business in 2023
Wondering how to start a wedding photography business in 2023? Wedding photography can be an immensely rewarding and satisfying job. But how do you get started? What steps do you take to get a wedding photography business off the ground?
We’re going to shed some light on everything you need to consider as you create your business. Whether you’re thinking about a career change, a side hustle or you’re just starting out in your career, this blog is a roadmap for your journey. Let’s dive in.
How to Start a Wedding Photography Business in 2023
This post includes affiliate links to external platforms that we love and truly believe in. If you choose to make a purchasing decision using the links provided on this post, we make a small commission at no cost to you.
Research Your Expenses
It’s a key part of drafting any kind of business plan: one of the first steps in how to start a wedding photography business is to get a good idea of what kind of expenses you’ll incur. There are two basic kinds of expenses you’ll face as you start a business: start-up costs and ongoing expenses.
As a wedding photographer, your start-up costs are centered around equipment and tools, while your ongoing expenses are more about time and upkeep. Let’s take a look.
Start-Up Expenses
The biggest up-front cost for anyone looking into how to start a wedding photography business is the equipment. Your camera and lenses are the backbones of your business, and there’s no real way around making this investment. You’ll also need to make sure you have a portable hard drive and the right memory cards.
When you’re starting out, try creating two lists: your must-haves, and then the aspirational equipment you will hopefully invest in as your business grows.
The other set-up costs are less significant in terms of lump sums, but no less important. You’ll need to pay for your business registration, your website domain and hosting, and editing tools like Lightroom. Beyond that, there are some optional but helpful costs to consider: printing business cards, for example, or the pro versions of a scheduling tool like Tailwind or a design tool like Canva. But more on that later!
Ongoing Expenses
With your start-up expenses figured out, you also have to account for the normal day-to-day costs of running your business. This can be a bit tricky to map out when you’re just starting because there’s always an element of trial-and-error when you’re going into new territory. It’s better to overestimate these expenses than to underestimate them.
You’ll have recurring fees like your website domain and any other subscriptions. When you’re just starting out as a wedding photographer, you’re also likely going to need to cover some of your own travel expenses, too.
The biggest thing to figure out here as you start to build your photography business is your time. Your time is valuable, and remember, for every hour of shooting, you have multiple hours of editing and processing to account for, too. Not to mention client communication and marketing! Figure out how much time goes into a job, outside of the actual hours of shooting. Then, work out how many hours a week go into everything else: your marketing, networking, and general upkeep.
Determine Your Prices
Now that you know what your outputs are, you have an idea of the kind of compensation you’ll need to make a profit. It’s time to set your initial prices.
The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing for wedding photographers. Your pricing depends on lots of factors: experience, location, and type of photography. Someone learning how to start a wedding photography business in the heart of Orange County is going to have a different pricing scale from a photographer in rural Arkansas. That’s why it’s so important to do research on your local market.
Talking to other local wedding photographers is super helpful here. If you can, take one of them to coffee and pick their brains. How much did they charge when they were starting out? How did they calculate their current pricing?
You also want to make sure that you know the typical rates for second shooting in your area.
Create a Business Plan
Now that you have an idea of your inputs and outputs, it’s time to create a business plan and provisional timeline for developing your business.
Again, it is very helpful to talk to other photographers as you do this. No business develops at exactly the same rate, but speaking with the people who have gone before you is going to help you create a realistic plan. Knowing what to expect is also going to stop you from being discouraged.
Dream big and start small! You are going to grow gradually, so set attainable and realistic goals. Start with a number of weddings you are aiming to shoot or second shoot in a year. At first, you are likely to be doing freelance photography part-time as you build up your portfolio, so create a plan for supporting yourself alongside this work.
This is a great time to start to think about your target market: who is your ideal couple, and what is your ideal wedding? Keeping these goals in mind will help you make decisions about where to take your brand and what kind of jobs you accept.
Register Your Business
Boring, but crucial: if you want to learn how to start a wedding photography business, you’ve got to go down all the official routes! Once you have a business plan and the equipment you need, it’s time to form an LLC, register with the federal government for taxes, and open a bank account in your business’s name.
Start Building Up Your Portfolio
Now that you have a lot of the admin of starting a wedding photography business out of the way, it’s time to build up your portfolio! Building up your portfolio is one of the biggest elements of how to start a wedding photography business. Your portfolio is the backbone of your marketing and your website, and therefore your credibility with potential clients.
Start with Small Shoots
You might have a few leads on potential clients who are willing to hire you without a big portfolio of your work: usually, these are friends and family members. Engagement shoots and engagement parties are often great things to offer at this stage because they aren’t as high-stakes as a wedding. At this point, taking smaller shoots (always with appropriate compensation!) is a good way to build up your portfolio.
When you’re just starting out, it can be tempting to offer services for free. This doesn’t set a good precedent, and it’s not fair to you and your skill and expertise! Even if you’re not charging full price, it’s important to make sure that you are being compensated from the very beginning of your business.
Another way to build up your portfolio is to work with local businesses, preferably wedding vendors. Take opportunities to partner with other people and create win-wins with smaller shoots that showcase products and services while also creating beautiful images for you to showcase on your website.
Work as a Second Shooter
Working as a second shooter on weddings is maybe the most effective way to get your foot in the door of the industry and start your own wedding photography business. When you work as a second shooter, you assist a more experienced photographer as they shoot a wedding. This is not only an amazing way to build up your portfolio, it’s also the best way to learn!
When you’re starting out as a second shooter, pitch to wedding photographers you respect. You can get in touch with them directly explaining your experience and the reasons why you want to work with them specifically. This doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a job, but it does help to put you on their radar as someone they can call on if they need a second shooter in the future.
There will also likely be Facebook groups and email lists for second shooters in your area – joining these can be a great way to connect with the community, learn about the going rates, and hear about opportunities to shoot weddings.
There are a few things you should keep in mind when you work as a second shooter at a wedding. One of the most important parts of this is to speak with the photographer beforehand and make sure that you have rights to share the photos that you take. Be very clear from the beginning that you want to use these photographs on your website and in your portfolio so that there are no misunderstandings down the line.
Working as a second shooter is also a chance to get to know different venues, vendors, and wedding planners in your area. Keep up your connections with them for the future – you never know when those connections will come in useful.
Figure Out Your Brand
As you get experience behind the camera, you will start to establish your style and the kind of content and subjects that interest you. Of course, if you’re just starting your wedding photography business, you might not know exactly what you want your niche to be, so you’ll want to try out different things.
Ideally, though, instead of just taking all the work that comes your way, you’ll pitch yourself and your brand as pretty specific in order to attract the kind of clients you want. This is the time to hone in on your brand and answer questions like:
What kind of wedding photographer are you? Fine art, editorial, classic, or photojournalistic style? There are more nuances here, but those are a few of the main categories.
What kind of weddings do you want to specialize in? Destination weddings all over the world? Local weddings in your city? Intimate micro-weddings, adventurous elopements, luxurious events? Think long and hard about your ideal wedding to shoot: size, style, and location.
What is your tone? So much about branding and marketing is about tone. A lot of that will come straight from your personality, but much of it depends on the direction you want to take your brand. Is your tone exclusive and professional, friendly and excited, or maybe creative and off-beat?
Are you offering to be a BFF who comes along on the happiest day of a couple’s life, a wise resource full of advice, a skilled and highly-sought after professional? Of course, you can be all three – and more – but when you think about your ideal clients, what kind of brand tone is going to appeal to them?
Knowing your brand will help you as you start widening the reach of your business across the Internet.
Create Your Website and Socials
When you know your brand, you can start to spread the word. If you’re thinking about how to start a wedding photography business, you probably already have an Instagram account for it, which is great. But keep in mind that social media doesn’t replace a website. In fact, all of your social media should be funneling people onto your website and/or email list.
Creating Your Website
Your website is one of the most important parts of how to start a wedding photography business. It’s the ultimate expression of your brand and skills, the home of your portfolio, and the way all of your potential clients not only assess your credibility but also get in touch with you.
With that in mind, it’s worth spending time building it, and maybe even consulting a professional, so that the copy and the visuals reflect your brand. Make sure it is easy to navigate, with clear ways to contact you and to see examples of your work. Remember everything we said about a portfolio? This is where that portfolio should be on display.
It’s also important to keep updating your website with your new work, but more on that later.
Create Your Socials
Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest all have different roles to play in starting your wedding photography business. You might wonder about Pinterest vs Instagram – we have a whole blog about it, but effectively, it’s not an either/or. Instagram is a great place to convey your personal brand, build connections with followers and supporters, and cultivate a way for people like venue managers, vendors, and potential clients to connect with you. It’s easy to say ‘Hey, just follow me on Instagram!’
Pinterest, on the other hand, is amazing for actually driving traffic to your website from people who are actively looking for a wedding photographer. If you’re trying to learn how to start a wedding photography business, not using Pinterest is a huge mistake. This is a massive tool!
For more on how to use Pinterest to boost your business, check out our Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Strategy for Wedding Photographers. You can make graphics for Pinterest very easily using a tool like Canva, or you could hire a Pinterest management service to take this part of starting a wedding photography business off of your plate.
Begin Blogging
Believe it or not, blogging isn’t dead – and it is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. It is so important to keep your website updated with your work, both in the eyes of potential clients and in the eyes of the Google algorithm that helps rank your website and help people actually find it.
With that in mind, you should build blogging into your post-shoot workflow, and account for the time there. How often should you blog as a wedding photographer? Find out here. Make sure that you are using SEO best practices to help your website climb the ranks of Google: you can get more information on how to write a wedding blog from our guide!
Don’t Be Afraid to Promote Your Work
When you’re first starting out self-promotion can feel vulnerable, especially if you don’t have a lot of content to share. Don’t let that stop you! Post away – make multiple posts from one shoot, share widely, and keep talking. After all, this is what brings you joy, and the fact that you’re only just starting out as a business owner doesn’t mean that you’re not one yet. Shout it from the rooftops.
At the end of the day, though, you didn’t go into this industry to write blogs and make Pins. You wanted to commemorate some of the happiest memories of people’s lives – and you wanted to do it through a medium that you love. That’s why services like us at Second Fiddle exist – so that you can rest easy knowing that the best expertise is taking care of things like SEO and digital marketing so that you can get back to the good stuff.
Create a Marketing Plan
We have a whole post on Marketing for Photographers for you to check out as you start to create a marketing plan for your wedding photography business, but for now, we’ll just say this: There are a million different ways to market your business, but most of them boil down to two things – media, and relationships.
Your social media and digital marketing content make up one branch of your marketing strategy. This includes Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, your email marketing, and your online presence as a whole.
Your relationships with past clients and fellow industry vendors and professionals make up the other branch of your marketing plan. The interaction of these elements is where marketing magic happens. Team up with some wedding vendors in your area to do an Instagram giveaway. Create a styled shoot. Meet new clients through word-of-mouth. Use your email list to offer a referral deal for every past client who refers someone new.
The options are endless!
Learning How to Start a Wedding Photography Business
We hope this has been a helpful introduction to the world of wedding photography! Starting a business is so exciting – and also hard! If you’re looking for more advice on how to win at your online presence as a wedding photographer, check out our blog. And if you’re looking for a little more support, feel free to get in touch.
*This post includes affiliate links to external platforms that we love and truly believe in. If you choose to make a purchasing decision using the links provided on this post, we make a small commission at no cost to you.
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