pros and cons to an outside photographer

[stitchfan18]

I bet there are a million threads about this already, but i'm a horrible searcher and couldn't find anything that completely answered my question, sorry

Ok, I was looking at my wishbook today and saw that i'm already up to almost 20K budget wise, and that is with guest count a little lower than what we'll probably end up having. We have a 25K budget, but I know that we'll only add more things to that budget once we meet with our planner and start talking about important things that i've totally forgotten to consider. I started to look at what I had in order to weed out some unnecessary expenses, and I couldn't help but think that almost 6K for photography seemed way expensive. I thought about reducing the length of photography services, but this wedding is such a big deal for my whole family that I want to have all the memories of our day captured. I looked at prices for a few outside photographers that i've heard a lot about on here, and their prices are much more reasonable.

Tell me why I would not want to book an outside photographer, or why I should definitely save money and deviate from Disney for this expense.

We're planning to have our wedding at WP and reception at ADH or somewhere else on the boardwalk, so we won't be going into any parks (outside photographers can't go into parks to take pictures of us, correct?)

Thanks for your help!

 

[lurkyloo]

Hi!

Usually the reason people don't go with outside photography is that they don't know they can or they need to meet their minimums. Or they feel it's easier to have Disney do everything (you can get all your photos from the MK shoot and the wedding and reception on one disc). And lots of them have been really happy with Disney.

Brides who go with outside photography do so to save money, to get the digital copies of all their photos without paying extra ($1,000 from Disney, unless you wait 3 years, then it's $100), and because they want to be able to pick their photographer (with Disney you never know who you're going to get so you can't really look at samples of your photographer's work).

Outside photographers can go into the parks to take pictures - there's an escort fee of I think $75 that's usually waived if it's someone like Randy Chapman, who does tons of DFTWs. The only thing an outside photgrapher can't do is the Magic Kingdom photo shoot of you in your dress in front of the castle.

Hope this helps!

 

[Skylarr29]

I think it is definitely to your advantage to go with outside photography. Randy Chapman's price for like all day coverage is around $2,600.00 or so and you get all the rights to your pictures included. You also will know who will be there on the day and you can research photographers and get advice and opinions here. Unless you need to meet the minimums with Disney you should research all your options.... why not get more bang for your buck.

 

[stitchfan18]

This is really good to here, I was thinking that outside photographers couldn't go in the parks to take pictures if our reception was in a park. This will save me so much money, thanks for your responses!

 

[Maggimus]

Yay for Randy