Why do Vendors increase their Prices?
“You can’t stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.”
– Shmi Skywalker
Although it may come as a surprise to many, it is fairly common knowledge that wedding vendors increase their prices every year (and sometimes throughout the year). There are several reasons for this and they all go against the common misnomer that we’re all just a bunch of greedy capitalists who need the money to pay for our oceanfront property in Panama.
In a nutshell, there are a few key factors that I’ll discuss to help break it down.
After the ‘Big Rona’ outbreak in 2020, the demand for wedding services now seems to be at an all-time high. Personally, I went from filming a few weddings a year in 2019 to doing about 25 in 2020 to filming 66 weddings in 2021.
That’s insane but it brings me to my first point.
Experience
With every wedding a vendor participates in, they refine their given skillset. They’re able to setup faster, operate smoother, work more efficiently and handle inevitable issues with a much more clear mind.
With this experience comes a confidence born of process and repetition. And believe me when I tell you that guests (and most notably, the bride and groom) can pick up on this. Experience is something that money can’t buy. It comes from being in the trenches and doing the work.
It should come as no surprise then that more experienced vendors will charge more. You’re not only paying for their services but their experience as well. It’s essentially a guarantee that you’re getting a well-refined machine to operate your wedding day instead of someone with the ‘knowledge’ of what to do but without the ‘wisdom’ of how to apply it.
Equipment
Regarding vendors who utilize specialty equipment to do their jobs (photo, video, DJ, etc.), that equipment doesn’t come cheap. Additionally, the sudden influx of people wanting to get into the wedding industry after 2020 has caused equipment prices to skyrocket, if you can find the equipment at all.
As vendors gain experience by working various weddings, they’ll more than likely upgrade their equipment to not only help streamline their processes but to also increase the quality of their services.
For example, when a videographer upgrades their camera and is able to jump from filming in 1080 to 4K, this is a significant upgrade. Along the same line, when a photographer upgrades their camera from a crop sensor to a full frame mirrorless camera and is able to utilize the fancy ‘silent shutter’ option (have you ever been to a wedding in a cathedral with a photographer whose camera shutter sounds like it was made in the previous century?), they’ll more than likely increase their prices.
You’re essentially paying for a more experienced and well-refined vendor who has their stuff together.
Demand
As vendors gain experience and upgrade their equipment along the way, believe me when I tell you that people take note. I’ve booked numerous weddings from random people walking up to me while I’m working at a wedding who ask for a business card because they see how I operate. Additionally, as said vendors perform more weddings, those of us with portfolios will be able to show a more refined product. With a growing portfolio comes a demand for said services.
At the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that I’d filmed 66 weddings in 2021. Although I wear that as a badge of honor, it’s not exactly something I relish. Most of those weddings came between August and December which included the craziest October I’ve ever seen or heard of where I filmed 11 weddings in one month. Again, that’s insanity.
Throughout that tornado of weddings, I had numerous vendors telling me to increase my prices. Why? Because the demand for my services was extremely high. By that time, I’d been through the ringer, my equipment was already towards the higher end and my final deliverables (highlight videos) were looking awesome.
It was time to take the plunge.
This process—although applied differently for the various vendors—is fairly common throughout the entire wedding industry. As someone who just increased the prices for their services, I felt that it was important to write this blog to explain that we’re not a bunch of money-hungry creatures. For the ones who’ve been doing this for several years, we’re professionals who’ve streamlined our skillsets and as such, the value of said skillsets along with the experience behind it increases.
I hope this helps to clarify what can oftentimes be the circus elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. As always, please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!
info@foundryweddingfilms.com