Destination weddings are a buzz word in the industry.  There are blogs dedicated just to this topic and it seems like every photographer has “passport ready” on their websites.  The part that gets glossed over in the excitement of travel, however, are the logistics.  A destination wedding is either a necessity (getting married back home with family) or a luxury, and excitement runs high with either option.  As exciting as the traveling and seeing family can be, there are many things to keep in mind.  One of them is hiring vendors, and I wanted to write today about hiring a photographer.

There are two sides to hiring a photographer for your destination wedding.

Hiring someone local – the benefit to hiring a photographer that is local to where you’re getting married certainly sounds like the logical choice.  They’ll be familiar with the area and customs and be able to take you to lesser known locations for pictures.  You don’t have to concern yourself with paying for travel and lodging or dealing with the worry of  plane delays.  If you’re traveling to a country where the dollar gets a lot of bang for the buck, you could even find yourself able to hire a high end photographer and still fit in your budget. 

However, you are usually meeting this photographer in person for the first time on your wedding day, and there is always a bit of a risk with that.  You are also leaving your wedding photos behind when you leave your destination as well as dealing with a foreign set of copyright and business laws.  What if your photographer doesn’t deliver your images?  Did you know you’d have to fly back to that destination to file a legal claim (if a legal claim is even honored)?  This is why it is so important to work with trusted vendors, research them VERY carefully and chat on skype before hiring. 

There are now wedding planners that specialize in destination weddings and can be invaluable when dealing with these situations.  I spoke with Amy, owner of Fete Perfection, about this very issue and she brought up concerns I had never even thought of before.  She is very experienced with long distance wedding planning and would be the perfect person to have on your team if you’re looking at a wedding outside the United States.

Hiring someone that lives in your home town – the main purpose for hiring a photographer and flying them to your destination with you is peace of mind.  You know where this photographer works and you can meet them in person before the wedding.  It is easier to find past clients’ to interview and you can ask for word of mouth referrals from friends and family.  If there are any problems or questions, they are not physically that far from you and I find that very reassuring, especially when potential questions arise after the wedding.  A bonus that some photographers do (us included) is that they’ll shoot a day after session or rehearsal dinner or other activities as a part of the wedding package.  Some photographers charge more for this, others throw it in because they are already with you. 

Another plus is that your photographer will know how to deal with your family and customs since they come from the same region.  Even when traveling across the United States customs and tastes are so dramatically different, so having a photographer that comes from your neck of the woods can be very helpful in these situations. 

The obvious downside of this is cost.  You have to fly, transport, lodge and feed your photographer on top of paying for their photography talent and time.  There are many photographers eager to do destination weddings and will keep their costs low, but the pros that travel for a living know better and treat it like any other wedding, not a chance to vacation.  Over the years, we have certainly learned that shooting the wedding at a discount and sleeping on a groom’s couch to get to go to a cool location isn’t worth it.  If you’re going to invest in flying a photographer with you to your wedding, do it right and treat your photographers as guests. 

So why do destination wedding photographers charge what they do?  A big part of the cost is that if a photographer travels to a wedding, they are locking in only one wedding for the weekend.  Full time photographers cherish their wedding weekends as there are only so many a year.  And if they are used to shooting two weddings (or three) a weekend, it can be hard to go to a destination and lose that expected income. 

Another part of the cost is risk.  Your photographer has a lot of expensive equipment as well as the stress of carrying around images that can’t be repeated and they hold that responsibility very seriously.  What happens if a card of your images falls into the ocean?  Or a camera is stolen that has your ceremony pictures on it?  This part of the equation is taken so seriously that many destination photographers will immediately download the wedding, back it up onto portable hard drives and ship them that night to TWO different locations to make sure that the images are safe.  Extra insurance, work visas and legal steps usually have to be taken as well, which ads cost and time to the bottom line.

Yet another part of the charge is that when photographers travel, they are away from their families.  Shooting weddings and engagement sessions already take photographers away from their family on nights and weekends, so they value time away and put a price on that.  I know that in my recent travels I definitely felt the stress of being away from my family and even the business.  And when John and I travel to shoot weddings, we have the extra expense of hiring 24/7 childcare for our little ones, planning all of the logistics with that is quite a lot of work.  Though we balance that work with a LOVE of travel and photographing weddings, there is a reason we only do a few destinations a year.

We have been hired for both kinds of destination weddings.  We have been flown across the United States to shoot and we’ve also been the local photographer that a couple has hired from another state or country to photograph their Minnesota wedding.  Both options have their plus side and downside, it just depends on what works best for the couple.  So if you are planning either type of destination wedding, keep these thoughts in mind when looking into photographers.  Happy planning!