PDN Pulse: What Couples spent on Weddings in 2010

Photo District News provides an interesting summary of data from The Knot to give us a snapshot of current trends in wedding expenses for the United States. For photographers, here is the pertinent data:

$26,984    Average spent on entire wedding Nationally.
$2320       Average spent on photography Nationally.

$70,730    Highest Average (Manhattan, NY)
$13,214    Lowest Average (Utah)

20% of couples spent more than $30,000 on their weddings
12% of couples spent more than $40,000 on their weddings

This kind of information will help you decide how you can run your business. For example, if you have a "shoot-to-burn" model with few expenses, little overhead and a minimum invested in client time, support and service, you can compete for the "lower-end" couples and shoot a large volume of weddings.

On the other hand, if you want to provide your clients more in the way of quality products and services, you will not have enough time to shoot a large volume of weddings. Assuming 8-12% of the total wedding budget may be allocated to photography, a low volume business will have to compete for the top 10% or even 5% of "high-end" couples.

Let's assume you want to take home $30,000. A high-volume shooter might be able to keep 50% to 60% of gross. At an average of $1000 per wedding, a high-volume shooter would need to shoot 60 weddings or so to make $30,000. That's more than one wedding per weekend and a lot of work, but maybe a good option for some.

A low-volume shooter, on the other hand, has to invest a lot of time into things like consultations and other services, post-processing, sales, and product production, packaging and delivery. Low-volume shooters also usually have higher overhead costs. Most low-volume shooter will be lucky to keep %25 to %30 of gross sales. So if you want to make $30,000 as a low-volume shooter, you had better plan on grossing $120,000. Assuming at least $4000 per wedding, you will need to shoot about 30 weddings per year and work most days of the week. This is still a massive amount of work!

The bottom line is that it is not easy to make a living as a wedding photographer! And if you live in Utah like me, well.......