This is not a silly post in the matter of an amateur that gets asked to work paying gigs. If your work is satisfactory, it is very common to initially have close friends and family consider you for their photography needs. As word of mouth continues, of course even people outside of your immediate contacts will pick up on your skills and engage in business type transactions.

Business

This is where this stops being silly and becomes very serious, very fast. You love photography, but do you want a business? Are you prepared to get:

• Insurance, both liability and asset coverage
• CPA to complete your yearly taxes
• Professional association memberships
• Contract(s)
• A business plan
• A line of business credit with your bank
• Collection of taxes from clients
• Training on marketing
• Loss of all weekends especially during busy seasons
• Hours in front of a computer fulfilling orders, SEO, social media
• Training in becoming great at sales

So that was a bit of a scare tactic. If you do love photography and you do want to go at it professionally, far and away the best advice I can give you is to stop shooting them for family/friends/friends of friends - and start second shooting. You will learn vast amounts of knowledge that you simply won't gain on your own, or would but after making many years of mistakes. Wedding photography should really not be jumped into without second shooting of some kind. Similar to how a nurse or doctor commonly practices under the guidance of a seasoned professional prior to graduation from school.

Pricing

What price should you charge? Really this question is outside the scope of this website. It is a very specific question that a real answer would only apply to you. We would also need a great deal of more information such as your costs to keep the lights on, equipment amortization, local pricing data, etc. The list is nearly endless and frankly people charge money to help with this and even then it is a skill to properly create a price list. It takes modifications and improvement constantly from any professional photographer.

In all honesty, charging anything other than zero in your shoes is a bad idea. Charging a few hundred or even a thousand dollars is a doing a disservice to the photography community as a whole, and grossly under valuing your own time. Having a $1000 camera and 8 hours of time is not what shooting a wedding is about. The years of experience, trained eye, ability to predict the next shot before it happens, perfect technical execution, multiple backups, insurance, reliability, along with the artistic merit to match all of it - is what shooting a wedding is about. It certainly can be rewarding and challenging, but please if at all possible start by second shooting and ensuring that you do in fact want to start a business!

Resources

We have great resources already on this site for wedding photography that I would recommend:

• How do I go about becoming a second shooter for a wedding photographer?
• How to become a wedding photographer?
• Tips for photographing a wedding
• How much should an amateur charge for a portrait session?
• How do I prepare best for my first wedding photography event?
• Wedding Tag