benandmolly.com

How Long Does it Take to Get Pictures Back From My Wedding? The short answer: if you book with us, 3 weeks or less. With others, it could be less, the same, 2 months, or more. Now for the long answer, which would be good for you to read too!

Before you read below, understand that this is my personal opinion and I want you all to know this is how we choose to run our business. We have no idea how long our fellow colleagues take to get images back to their clients and it is not my intent to knock how they work. 

Just because it’s wedding photography does not automatically equal 1 or 2 months (or longer!) to wait for your pictures. If you aren’t okay with waiting weeks on end, then you will be able to find a quality, high-end photographer who can give you your images in under a month.  We pride ourselves on getting it right in camera, so our edit time takes as little as possible after the wedding. We also schedule our jobs to ensure the best customer service to our existing clients instead of being focused on who’s around the corner.

In the photography world, a very general consensus is that it takes about 20-25 hours of work to prepare a wedding: including album design, slideshows, blog posts, etc. Say I almost double that time to 45 hours. That is 3 hours a day on weekdays for 3 weeks. If a photographer can’t spend that time in the month right after your wedding (that they have known about usually at least 6 months, if not a year, in advance), then they aren’t scheduling themselves properly. If I ask a bride and groom to spend a premium on Ben and I, the least I can do is plan ahead to set aside 3 hours a day for that wedding to finish their work in a timely manner. If that requires us saying no to another job, then so be it!  Of course, it doesn’t take us 45 hours to prepare a wedding. But we do have small children who require more attention than older children! So I give myself 3 weeks instead of the 1 it usually would take me. And that is how we do business. We are a boutique studio, which means we are low-volume (we stick to around only 15 weddings per year) and give the best customer service we can give them. That does equal in paying more for us than others in our industry. But with us you know that we will answer the phone when you call, respond to emails within hours, be in open communication with your other wedding vendors, get photos to you in a timely manner, and not neglect our children.

So, I said all this to say, you do have a choice on when you get your photos. If you don’t like the timeline of what a photographer states, then talk with them and ask about getting the images sooner. You need do this before you sign a contract with them at the initial booking. Or find a photographer who will.

And because no blog post should go without a photo, here’s one from a wedding last week!