What's the average cost of a wedding photographer in the South of England in 2027?

Wedding photography pricing is often frustratingly hard to find! Here I am going to lay out how much you should be expecting to pay, how to differenciate photographers and why it really costs as much as it does! Hi, I'm Cat and I'm a full time wedding photographer based in Hampshire and travelling all over UK and Europe. I charge £1600 for 8 hours coverage and around 700 digital images in 2026 and I'm hoping to write this today without any bias but give honest feedback to anyone looking to work out how much to spend.

First things first,

Current UK wedding photographer pricing baseline for 2026

• UK averages for full-day wedding photography in 2026 sit around £1,300–£1,800 for a professional photographer, with more experienced shooters often pushing above this.

• London & the South East have historically been priced higher than the national average, and this is often by £200-300.

• More premium, well-established photographers in these areas sometimes charge in the £2,000–£4,000+ bracket, especially if albums, engagement sessions, second shooters or other add-ons are included.

And my predictions,

2027 wedding photographer costs in the South of England

Typical ranges you’ll see quoted for full day weddings in 2027 (South England / London):

• Standard pro full-day package: £1,700–£2,500

• Experienced established photographers: £2,500–£4,000

• Top-tier / luxury wedding photographers: £4,000+ (still a minority)

  
  

Costs for photographers continue to rise through 2026 with rising costs in software and critically in solid state drives and storage options. I expect to see a £100-£200 increase in costs being passed onto couples. There will always be newcomers into the wedding photography field but I'll go into a bit of detail below about why I think you should be avoiding anyone charging less than £1k for wedding photography in the south of england.

My advice? Book your photographer as early as you can and lock in a 2026 price for 2027 and beyond.

Why do costs vary between wedding photographers?

To answer this I need to talk about three different catagories:

• Product

• Package

• Experience

  
  

Product

I like to liken this to hiring an artist to paint you a picture. You can pay someone whos never painted a picture before and the results could vary from, this is useless or suprisingly ok. Or you can hire someone who you can see has painted hundreds of paintings, the quality is consistent and you're almost guaranteed to love your painting based on what they've painted before.

I would strongly recommend to anyone looking to hire a wedding photographer in the south of england (or indeed anywhere) that looking at a website isn't enough, this is a pretty shop window, asking to see sample full galleries is going to give you a better understanding of what you can expect to receive.

Wedding Packages - What do they include?

What does a package include? Second photographers, 35MM, drone, video content creation, travel, digital images, prints? There are so many variables to consider with packages and each photographer will have thier own idea of what the perfect package looks like. It's worth attempting to strip back packages to hours coverage and expected number of digital images in order to make fairer comparisons while taking into account experience and product.

Experience - How much wedding experience is enough?

When you pay for a photos you're also paying for the photographer themselves. The person who is going to be with you all day on your wedding day should be a calm presence and more than just a photographer.

Weddings are hectic, the demands on a photographer range from creative (light issues/space constraints etc) to physical like timelines going awry and photographers need to be able to rally to get the essential photos in trunkated timelines. And all the way up to emotional, photographers are normally first to notice when a bride is upset, when someones Mum is breaking down or someone had one too many drinks, experience builds skills to manage all these situations and more while delivering an essential service.

How have I seen photographers charging £400 a day?

I've been doing this now for only just over 4 years so I have the experience to know that this is not a sustainable business model and anyone charging this may not be in business by the time your wedding rolls around. I don't say that to scare you, well maybe I do because I think wedding photography is really serious and I don't want you to be left in the lurch.

There are likely three camps of people charging under £1000 for wedding photography in the UK.

1. Those with very low running costs read: they might not have multiples in thier kit bag, insurance, back ups, old gear etc

2. Those who already have an income and do this as a hobby read: they have another job that takes precident, editing queues might be longer

3. Newcomers who might not fully grasp the cost of doing business yet (read: they may not have much experience)

The old addage of you can't have good+fast+cheap works here, one always has to give. If you have a smaller budget and still want to invest in wedding photography you may have to sacrifice on speed or quality.

Why does wedding photography cost so much?

There's so much more to wedding photography than the 8 hours we're stood with you on event.

I think in order to not ramble on I'll break down the running cost and time that goes into each wedding photography booking for my own business and hope that helps shed some light on what goes into it.

Plus all the extra running costs for business that we have to factor into the cost. I don't do this so you can break down how much photographers are making per hour, more to show that theres more than meets the eye!

Task/Product	Cost	Time
Consultation		1 hour
Transaction Fees	3.5%
Pre Wedding Consultation	£50	3 hours (inc travel)
Admin		1 hour
Fuel/Travel	£30	2 hours
Time on location		8 hours
Sneak Peek Edits		2 hours
Final edit		24 hours
Post wedding communication		1 hour
Marketing	£400 a month
Website	£200 a year
Camera & Gear	£20k + maintance costs
Software to edit images	£60 a month
Software to deliver images	£30 a month
Storage	£500 a year
Training	£2000 a year
Insurance	£200 a year
Calendly booking software	£10 a month
Booking software for contracts and invoices	£180 a year

Why I would suggest spending 10% of your total budget on a wedding photographer.

Consider that once the day is done the images will be one of the few things you'll have left to relive your day. When you choose the right photographer you'll relive your day again and again through photos you love and can't stop looking at. It makes sense to spend more money on photographs that live on than flowers for example.

Interested in what I charge? I'm an open book all my prices and packages are here and, you can build your own package here.