Carnival Brides...Photography!

I'm a little over 20 days to go (YAY!!) and I'm starting to really finalize my budget plans. I have been back and forth with my picture budget and I'm not really sure which way is the right way to go; so I'm hoping some of you can help! What was your picture budget and did you come in over or under budget?

Were any of you able to negotiate things like price and getting all the pictures on the CD and not just the purchased ones?

How much did you tip the photographer?

Thanks so much for all the help!!

Congratulations! The next few weeks will fly by I'm sure!

My picture budget was the only thing I wasn't totally happy with (when the time came). Prior to the wedding cruise, I was under the impression the the CD of the digital images (for something like $750 had ALL the pictures taken). This is what I had planned on purchasing. This was not the case.

I think I ended up spending around $600 (if my memory serves me correctly) where we only purchased a combination of 5x7s & 8x10s.

Here's the link to my wedding cruise review in which I discuss the photos situation I encountered in detail. I do recall other brides after the fact telling me that their photographer had thrown in the CD of ALL pictures when they bought one of the more expensive packages! Of course this just added more fuel to my fire! haha

Good luck! And if your photographer gives you a good deal in regards to your picture package...consider yourself lucky! lol

Let me know if you have specific questions after reading...

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1412134

I had budgeted $750 for pictures since we had the price list prior to boarding. However, our photographer had put together his own package which included a photo book. While the book was beautiful and he put a lot of work into it. In the end we did not buy it because it would not allow us to add in the pictures from our other events. The costs of his packages were $1599, $1999 and 2599.

Our photographer let us alter the package a little bit, by allowing us to take 3 5x7s for one 8x10.

It was really easy for us to narrow down the pictures because although they were all very nice, we really only wanted the pictures we would send to ppl or display in our home.

Awesome...This is what I needed! Still don't know how much to budget but the info is really helpful!! Thank you!!

We budgeted around $750 based on the package prices we had seen. But then when we saw the photo book our photographer had put together there was no was I could not have that book (double what our budget was for all of the prints we planned on getting). The deal with the book was that you also got a CD with all of the pictures included in the book but not ALL of the pictures taken. I was almost literally crying at the thought of leaving all those other pictures behind. Our photographer was not only extremely talented, he was also a really nice guy because he agreed to put ALL of the pictures on CD's for us. That saved me having to carry anything except the book and disk off the ship and I was able to print lots of prints online for a fraction of what prints from the ship would have cost. All in all I really feel like we got a great deal even though we blew our budget.

I'm a little over 20 days to go (YAY!!) and I'm starting to really finalize my budget plans. I have been back and forth with my picture budget and I'm not really sure which way is the right way to go; so I'm hoping some of you can help! What was your picture budget and did you come in over or under budget?

Were any of you able to negotiate things like price and getting all the pictures on the CD and not just the purchased ones?

How much did you tip the photographer?

Thanks so much for all the help!!

We did a vow renewal and ended up spending the 750 package but the only photos on the cd are the photos I purchased, they release copyrights, and i was able to trade the canvas in for extra photos. they werent happy about that but thenneither was I cuz its way to expensive and hard to find and album to fit all of those 8 x 10 and 5 x 7 photos. But when you get the photos back take your time to go through them, cuz lot of them, are either duplicates or close to it, usually the 5 x7 are of the ceremony and the 8x10 are of you and your wedding party. so we piked through and narrowed them down. He said we only had 10 mins but we took 2 hours, so make em wait.

We did a vow renewal and ended up spending the 750 package but the only photos on the cd are the photos I purchased, they release copyrights, and i was able to trade the canvas in for extra photos. they werent happy about that but thenneither was I cuz its way to expensive and hard to find and album to fit all of those 8 x 10 and 5 x 7 photos. But when you get the photos back take your time to go through them, cuz lot of them, are either duplicates or close to it, usually the 5 x7 are of the ceremony and the 8x10 are of you and your wedding party. so we piked through and narrowed them down. He said we only had 10 mins but we took 2 hours, so make em wait.

10 minutes??? That is crazy. I would have been a little upset about that. Our photographer told us to take as long as we needed and actually left the room so we could go through everything on our own. He came back well over a half hour later in case we had questions but never hovered or pressured. You were absolutely right to take your time!

That's nuts! When we did our engagement pictures on the Glory, our photog let us take the box of photos into the library and sort through.

We did a vow renewal and ended up spending the 750 package but the only photos on the cd are the photos I purchased, they release copyrights, and i was able to trade the canvas in for extra photos. they werent happy about that but thenneither was I cuz its way to expensive and hard to find and album to fit all of those 8 x 10 and 5 x 7 photos. But when you get the photos back take your time to go through them, cuz lot of them, are either duplicates or close to it, usually the 5 x7 are of the ceremony and the 8x10 are of you and your wedding party. so we piked through and narrowed them down. He said we only had 10 mins but we took 2 hours, so make em wait.

There were over 100 images, no way could you go through it in 10mins. Our photographer let us go through the pics and when we told him we needed time to decide what to do, he told us to come back in a few days. He was GREAT!

We didn't have a budget but I figured we'd spend about $1000 on pictures....boy was I wrong. In the end we spent $2200-2300. Not quite sure of the exact number but it was definitely between 22 and 23.

The first thing I'm going to tell you is, throw that price list in the garbage. While the price list is their list of packages, essentially, you can make your own. Our photog took over 1000 pictures (that's not a typo). His presentation was beautiful. He put together a bound book, which we asked to make changes to but for the most part really liked what he included in it. The book price is $1600. With that you get a CD with the pics that were put in the book so you can print your own. We then picked out 18 8x10's and 26 5x7's, of which he put on a CD so that we could make copies of those as well. What we walked away with was the book, individual pictures (listed above) and 2 CD's (1 in slideshow format & 1 in single file format to make addionational prints) all for $2200(?).

To answer your question about tipping, we tipped him $50 on the wedding day when we finished our photo session.