If you’re getting married in Europe and you live in the States, everyone gives you two options. Fly yourphotographer over from home, or hire someone who lives at the destination.
There’s a third one that almost nobody puts on the table: photographers who already live in Europe and travel fora living, with the flights built into the price. That’s what we do — we’re Andra and Marius, and one of us comesto your wedding, occasionally both. Before we make the case for it, we want to be honest about what the othertwo options actually get you, because the real question isn’t where your photographer lives.
The real question is how many times they’ve photographed that room
Marius started his career shooting for a company that worked out of one venue. In his busiest year hephotographed close to sixty weddings there, and he did that for about three years.
It was easy. He knew where the light fell at five in the afternoon. He knew which corner worked when it rained.He knew what would happen at 21:30 before it happened. And that’s exactly the problem. When you alreadyknow where the good pictures are, you stop looking for new ones. You arrive, you work, you go home. Itbecomes a job you’re good at, and it stops being a search.
We’re not saying that to criticize anyone. We were those photographers, and the pictures were fine. But we knowwhat changed when we started travelling, because we felt it in our own hands. When you fly somewhere for awedding, you are never on autopilot. You’re slightly outside your comfort zone from the moment you land, andthat keeps you awake for three days.
These days we actively try not to return too often to the same venue. Not out of principle — because we want towalk in and have to look.
So when you compare a local photographer to one who travels, the question isn’t who is more talented. It’s howmany times they’ve stood in your venue already, and whether your wedding is the fortieth of their year in thatsame room.
What eight hours buys, and what it doesn’t
A few years ago we worked as a second shooter for a local photographer. The contract was for a set number ofhours. When the time ran out, we were in our jackets and out the door maybe five minutes later. He told thecouple, politely, that we had to respect our own time. There were still real moments coming — the party hadbarely started.
We understood him. He was doing exactly what he was paid to do, and hourly coverage is a legitimate way towork.
We just work differently. When we take a wedding, there is no clock on the wedding day. We’ve had couplesbook us until 22:00, put it in the contract, and then we were still with them at five in the morning and back atbreakfast at eight. That happened in Barcelona. Nobody asked us to stay. We stayed because that’s where thepictures were.
What three days actually looks like
For a destination wedding we photograph three days, not one.
The day before is usually a rehearsal dinner, or an activity, or both. We’ve photographed a zip line in Costa Rica,apple picking in Rhode Island, a visit to the Mayan pyramids in Mexico, a catamaran day in Greece, and anotherone in St. Martin. These are the days when the people who flew across the world to be there actually meet eachother. A photographer booked for the wedding day never sees any of it.
The wedding day has no time limit.
The day after is usually the pool, or the sea, or nothing at all. We keep the camera with us at breakfast. The nightbefore, everyone was immaculate. The next morning there are sunglasses and tired faces and people laughing ateach other, and those are some of the best frames of the whole weekend. We shoot wide there, not portraits, notdetails. Nobody has ever asked us to stop.
The longest we’ve stayed was six days.
There’s one evening we think about often. The couple had said all day that at the end everyone would jump in thepool. When the moment came, nobody moved. Everyone was pushing someone else to go first. We asked them ifthey really wanted to. They said yes, but they didn’t want to be the ones to start it. So the suit came off and we gotin, and then we asked who was coming. Half the wedding was in the water within a minute.
Another time we were already in the pool photographing a game of volleyball when someone lost their balanceand came down on us. We ended up with blood on a forehead and in a mouth. We smiled and kept shooting,because it was a consequence of our own decision to be in there. They still apologize about it years later. Theyshouldn’t. That’s the job.
Why we ask to stay where you stay
We don’t include accommodation in our price. We ask the couple to arrange it, at the venue or as close aspossible. It’s not about comfort. It’s the single thing that changes what ends up in your gallery.
The moments people believe nobody is watching are the ones we want. Two people talking on the beach afterdinner. A hug in the pool. Someone’s parents sitting on a sofa in the living room watching a film with their armsaround each other. None of that happens between 14:00 and 22:00. If we’re driving back to a hotel in town atmidnight, those pictures simply do not exist.
Staying there also changes how people treat you. By the third day you’re not the photographer anymore, you’repart of the group. We’re still in touch with a lot of the couples we’ve photographed, and it started on those in-between days.
What if the wedding isn’t in English?
It usually isn’t, and it has never been a problem.
We’ve photographed a Polish wedding in New York, a couple who spoke Mandarin in Singapore, a Chinesegroom and an Indian bride, two grooms who spoke Dutch at a castle in Tuscany, and a Jewish wedding in Israelconducted entirely in Hebrew. At that one we knew the glass would be broken. We had no idea at which minute.
Here’s what we learned: a wedding is almost entirely visual. When you don’t understand a word being said, youcan’t relax and coast on the words. You have to watch harder. We’ve come to like it.
It also means we don’t need your schedule to do our job. We’ve never missed a moment because we didn’t know itwas coming — the tea ceremony, the glass, the first look, whatever your family does. We’re there the whole time,and that covers everything a timeline would have told us.
“But you’ve never photographed at our venue”
That’s the standard question, and our honest answer is that we hope we haven’t.
We’ve photographed hundreds of weddings in more than a hundred different venues, across over forty countries.When we walk into a room we’ve never seen, we’ve already got four or five places in mind where we’dphotograph a couple. That reflex doesn’t come from knowing the building. It comes from having walked into ahundred buildings.
When we arrive somewhere new, we walk. We look at where the light comes from, where the ceremony will be,where the reception will be, and where we could take the two of you afterwards. We’re not looking for pretty.We’re looking for simple — we want as little clutter behind you as possible.
But the first thing we do isn’t the location at all. It’s the people. What they like, where they spend their time, whatmakes them them. We never build a photograph starting from the background. We start from the light, then fromhow to show you in it, and the background comes last.
And if you’ve never been to the country either, that’s better for us. We start documenting from the arrival — asign, a map, a book, the streets, the details of the hotel. Your wedding didn’t start in a hotel room with a dress ona hanger. It started when you landed.
The fear nobody says out loud
Almost every couple has the same one, even if they phrase it politely: what if I pay a stranger and nobody showsup? You’re in a foreign country. There’s nothing you could do.
It’s a fair fear, and here’s what we put against it. A contract. Work published across dozens of countries you cango and look at. And a conversation — usually several — before you ever pay anything.
On our side, the answer is boring and mechanical. All our equipment fits in carry-on and never leaves our hands:several bodies, several flashes, more batteries than we need, a backup for everything. Cards go to an externaldrive and online the same night, and the cards themselves are kept separately. In all these years we have neverlost a frame, never missed a wedding, and never had a problem at a border.
What it actually costs
This is where the third option stops being a philosophy and becomes arithmetic.
Photography is priced higher in the United States than in Europe. That’s just the market. It’s why you seeEuropean photographers working in the States all the time and almost never the other way around.
So flying your photographer from home is usually the most expensive of the three options by a wide margin,once you add the fee, the flights, the hotel and the days.
Our price is 5,500 USD, anywhere in the world, with flights included, three days of coverage and no time limiton the wedding day. One of us comes. A second photographer can be added if you want the day covered from twoangles, whatever the size of the wedding.
In practice that often lands close to what a good local photographer charges for eight hours on the wedding dayalone. That’s the whole argument, and it’s the reason we built the price this way instead of billing travelseparately: we didn’t want you doing sums about our flights while you’re trying to plan a wedding.
When you should hire a local instead
We’d rather tell you this than have you find out later.
If your wedding is a single day, in a single place, with nothing around it — a civil ceremony and a dinner, nowelcome party, no day after — then paying for someone to travel makes much less sense. Hire someone whosefull galleries you love, and spend the difference elsewhere.
The same is true if the day depends heavily on managing a large local family in their own language, which is realwork and easier for someone who does it every weekend. And if your total photography budget is genuinelytight, a very good local photographer will always beat a mediocre one who flew in.
Whoever you pick, ask to see complete weddings, not the best twelve pictures from twelve different days.
One warning about resort photographers
If you’re marrying at a resort, don’t take the in-house photographer without checking.
Resorts often select on price and resell at a much higher one, and we know specific cases where the person whoturned up was not the person whose work the couple had seen. If you go that route, talk to them well in advance,ask exactly who will be photographing your wedding, and ask to see that individual’s complete galleries — notthe studio’s.
The thing everything else depends on
Couples ask us fairly often, after the fact, to re-edit someone else’s photographs, or to do a session afterwards, orto build them an album out of what they have. We take those jobs when we can help. But there’s a limit to whatany of it can fix.
Everything you’ll want later comes from the photographs. An album for you, albums for your parents, a differentedit in ten years, prints for a wall — all of that is easy if the pictures are good, and impossible if they’re not.
The regret posts you see online, usually anonymous, almost always say the same thing. Two or three years on,they don’t remember the food. They don’t remember the band. They can’t picture the flowers. What’s left is whatsomebody photographed, and that’s the part they wish they’d taken more seriously.
So whoever you hire — us, someone local, someone from home — decide that part first.
