I covered my first wedding this past Saturday. I learned alot from this forum, and appreciate all the suggestions and info you have provided so far. My wife and I had a blast covering the wedding. I believe it was fun to do somehting together. Boy was I wiped out after the wedding. I was using a Monfrotto monopod during the reception, using it in all certain ways, felt like I had done crunches in the gym. Weddings are hard work. For anyone who down plays what we do, they are terribly mistaken. I give alot of credit to you guys. Coming from news, it in many ways is much like news. You are constanly on the look out for stuff to shoot. Thanks again.

The forum and it's members are great aren't they !

Glad your first wedding went well. And I definitely agree about how difficult it can get!

Hi Jeff

Yep, it's physically tough as well as mentally tough. I did a wedding last month for my niece (as her gift) and my wife came as a guest and commented that I hardly ever sat down the entire day and evening!
I did actually take a seat for dinner but that's about all. You can easily be on your feet for over 12 hours so no wonder you are tired.

I changed my packages in 2013 so the latest I now stay is to the end of the first dance (about 9:30pm) and it makes a huge difference compared to older weddings where I stuck around till midnight and only got to bed at 2am .... Weddings seem a lot easier now that I get home at a decent hour! It really wasn't worth the extra money to keep up with the long packages

Well done on the shoot

Chris

Yea, you arn't long doing a few weddings before you want to re-value the work you do.

I had no issues upping my price once I started to realise the effort involved!

Well done Jeff, enjoy the editing!

Jeff,
I've stated many times that shooting a wedding is like shooting breaking news. It happens once, it happens fast and there are no re-dos! Oh yeah, it's a long day as well. I've done up to 18 hours but only once in awhile on East Asian weddings. I'm far to old and out of shape for that any more.
You should always be re-evaluating your work not only for quality and style but also for price point. It's a never ending learning process.
Have fun and keep enjoying the work.

Thanks. I am going to up the price now. I needed one wedding to show people what I could accomplish. The wedding I did was really inexpensive, but I learned alot and I now have a trailer to post on the web.