Inexpensive Wedding Photography

Now more than ever brides are looking for a way to trim fat out of their wedding day budgets, and one of the most expensive slugs in that budget is the professional wedding photographer. Professional photography can easily cost five, six or even ten thousand dollars. So how can you bring down that cost without sacrificing your memories?

One trick that brides & grooms have been using for decades is to put a disposable camera or two on each of the guest tables (or hand them out prior to the ceremony) and encourage guests to use them. This is a win-win for everyone, the guests have a fun time taking photos and the bride & groom get the benefit of 100+ photographers covering their wedding. These "guest photos" tend to be more fun and candid than ones takes by the pros and often end up being the lucky couples favorites.

While this is a great money-saving technique, the decades old technology does have several disadvantages:

* Disposable cameras typically only have enough film for about 25 photos
* The quality can be quite poor, especially if you use the cameras outside their intended lighting/speed conditions, or if you opt for the "all-purpose" variety
* No way to tell if the photo you just took was a success (everyone is smiling, eyes open, etc)
* You end up having to pay to develop the entire roll, including photos that you are just going to throw away
* Unless you opt for the more expensive digital disposables, you can't easily share your photos via email, facebook, flikr, etc

One alternative that is becoming increasingly popular is to rent a set of digital cameras and use those instead of the disposable kind. You get all the benefits having your guests capture all the fun and candid memories without the negatives of the decades old disposable camera technology.

There are several companies that have cropped up to serve this market and some offer great additional services. For example, in addition to it's digital camera rental, fotocera.com takes care of uploading the photos from the cameras, provides free hi-resolution hosting of all your photos, provides free damage protection for the cameras and offers a free archive DVD with all of your photos. Additionally their cameras offer the ability to take HD video clips, which adds a whole new dimension and is great for recording messages to the bride and groom. Their basic cameras cost $29.95, which might seem like an arm and a leg when compared to the disposable variety, but since each camera can take literary thousands of photos and since you can choose which photos you want to print, it actually comes out cheaper than the disposable camera option (Fotocera has a great Digital vs. Disposable comparison on their website).

So if you are looking for a way to trim your wedding day budget, or you are having trouble fitting into the budget you already set, take advantage of this 21st century version of an old technique. You can use these "guest cameras" to completely cut out the professional photographer bill, or you can just downsize your package (less hours, less photographers).