Wedding photographer pricing calculator
Editing is where wedding photography profit is won or lost. A ten-hour wedding day routinely carries twenty or more hours of culling, editing, album design, client communication and delivery.
Cost those hours honestly and the package price you need becomes obvious.
The largest hidden cost in wedding photography.
Consultations, timeline planning, contracts, invoicing.
As a percentage of the purchase price.
- Direct costs£345.00
- Crew£220.00
- Travel£37.00
- Payment fees£38.45
- Overheads£268.89
- Equipment£233.33
- Your time£1,350.00
- Profit£57.33
After every cost and paying yourself £30.00 an hour, this wedding keeps £57.33 — a net margin of 2.2%.
To pay yourself properly and hit a 20% net margin, price this from £2,776.65. Adding £576.65 would raise annual profit by roughly £10,379.75 at your current volume.
A 10.0-hour booking actually takes you 45.0 hours once setup, prep, admin and travel are counted — 4.5× the on-site time.
Overheads add £268.89 to every wedding at 18 bookings a year. Fewer bookings raise this figure, so a quiet year needs a higher price, not a lower one.
At 2 bookings a month, this kit pays for itself after about 8 bookings — roughly month 4.
You need about 25 bookings a year to take home £35,000.00 from this service — currently you are planning 18.
A 10% discount (£220.00) would cut this wedding’s profit to -£162.67 — a 384% fall.
- Overhead per booking = annual overheads ÷ (bookings per month × months trading)
- Equipment per booking = (purchase price ÷ lifespan + maintenance allowance) ÷ bookings per year
- True cost = direct costs + crew + travel + payment fees + overhead per booking + equipment per booking + (your hours × your target rate)
- Effective hourly rate = (revenue − cash costs) ÷ every hour the booking takes you
- Break-even price = cash costs ÷ (1 − payment fee %) − add-on revenue
- Recommended price = (cash costs + your time) ÷ (1 − payment fee % − target margin %) − add-on revenue
- Equipment payback = purchase price ÷ (revenue − variable costs − overhead per booking)
Results are planning estimates, not financial or tax advice.
If your editing estimate has not been timed against a recent wedding, it is almost certainly too low.
Their fee, travel and food belong to that wedding, not to general overheads.
Shutter counts and lens wear mean bodies are a rolling cost. Spread replacement across the weddings that use them.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my hourly rate look so low?
- Because the calculation divides what you keep by every hour the wedding takes — including editing and admin. A high day rate with thirty hours of unpaid editing behind it produces a modest hourly figure.
- Should albums be priced separately?
- Enter the album cost as a direct cost and its price within add-ons. The calculator then shows whether the album is contributing margin or absorbing it.