Has Wedding Inspiration Gotten Out Of Hand?

I happen to be in a lot of wedding related groups and my social media feeds are full of wedding related posts. I see everyones wedding inspo – and spoiler alert it’s all the same and completely out of reach for the average wedding. This is not only causing undue stress to the couples having weddings but also the vendors trying to live up to expectations set by planning couples inspiration boards. There are several big reasons why this has become such a problem, and all of them have to do with unrealistic ideation of whats possible.

Right now most people are sharing the exact same group of photos. Really beautiful golden hour portraits in an open field somewhere in Hawaii or Europe. Veil covering the couple with the light coming through. Fun, running photos and a good spin. These are generally followed by photos in Europe with historic buildings or Chateaus / Villas. Accompanied by really warm editing and brown undertones. They have a more moody feeling than some of the brighter photos being circulated on wedding accounts at the moment. On their own these all seem fine. I’m all for the return of some mood in photography, but the devil is in the details.

These posts have 100’s of comments by the time they’re an hour old. Most from photographers that don’t have this editing style or don’t shoot in the same way. Some of them are down right brazen to comment “THIS IS MY STYLE” when their images are more formal and edited with light and airy presets and blown out highlights. Could these photographers deliver similar photos? Maybe, in a few years when they get some more experience. Definitely not at the time they made the comment.

After 100’s of comments go up on these posts the couples then have to wade through them all to find the perfect photographer that costs less than $2000. After using inspiration from photographers that are more in the $10,000 and up range. They want professional, established photography in the beginner market. Maybe they’ll get lucky and find a truly exceptional person that’s new to the industry, but the odds are not in their favor. Not to mention shifting through that many photographers is going to bring on a fatigue like no other.

Finally, they manage to find someone whose work is nothing like their inspo – but the price is right. This is one of the photographers that commented on the ‘in search of’ post with the inspiration photos, and said that this was totally their style. The couple can see that the portfolio of the photographer and the inspiration photos don’t align, they move forward anyways.

When the photographer shows up to the wedding they realize a few things:

1. The venue is an old barn that definitely does not resemble a European villa
2. There aren’t any open fields to take photos in.
3. Photo spot access is reserved to a corner of the barn that isn’t set up for the ceremony / reception, a 3×3 square of grass in the corner of the parking lot, and a “bridal suite” with horrible lighting and happens to be the size of a broom cupboard.
4. It’s rainy season so there’s not going to be a chance of golden hour.

At this point there’s no way that the inspiration photos are coming to fruition. This isn’t just on the photographer or the couple, it’s a mixture of unrealistic expectations on both sides. The photographer should be able to look at their work and expertise and know that they weren’t the right fit for this job. The couple should have been able to look at the venue they booked and realized that there’s no way to make it into a wide open field and a European Villa.

After the wedding, once the photographer delivers the photos in the style all over their portfolio, the couple realizes that this isn’t the style they actually wanted. They take the worse of the photos and put them on social media and drag the photographer online because it isn’t what they wanted. The photographer retaliates and sends a hoard of industry “professionals” to attack the couple. Creating something that’s talked about on social media for weeks.

So who is really at fault here? Everyone.

The lack of communication between the wedding industry and couples planning is the number one culprit. How are regular people supposed to know anything about the wedding industry if we don’t tell them? Vendors and Wedding Blogs alike hide behind a sense of superiority like it’s our main goal in life to be dark and mysterious. Which, is hilarious, given that our literal careers are in the service industry.

Second on the list is the fact that wedding blogs and magazines are genuinely only showing $100k +++++ weddings on their sites now. Pre covid, this wasn’t always true. I (a wedding photographer) had multiple lower budget weddings featured on big name blogs, consistently. Now it’s impossible to even have my “luxury” events picked up for feature. It’s a weird time out there in the wedding world, and it’s not doing anyone any favors. This is one of the biggest reasons WHY most of the wedding inspiration planning couples are saving are simply not possible for the average wedding.

Third, we have the couples planning. Sure they should be able to look at $200k worth of florals and realize that’s not possible for $5000. BUT if that’s all they’re seeing it’s hard to blame them for being upset about the state of things. I can say that if they are hiring vendors simply based on price and not their portfolios, then they have no business complaining about the product they received if it aligns with the vendors portfolio. They should be able to see that they did, in fact, get what they paid for.

The biggest question I have is how do we actually move forward from this? How do we create realistic expectations within this industry when there is absolutely no one overseeing it? Or hold people accountability? We have to start doing it ourselves. As vendors we have to start educating on our platforms and being truthful. We can’t always hide behind our online personas when it’s affecting the people hiring us.

This wedding blog is my answer to help out in a way that I hope has a positive impact on the wedding industry. There will be real planning articles past the normal “what are the best bridesmaids gowns” we constantly see. Real weddings with budgets listed, and all budgets are welcome. Vendor features for vendors that may have been overlooked by the other wedding websites out there. And hopefully a community of people that just really love working in this industry. If that sounds like you, whether you’re a vendor or a couple planning – I welcome you to the Artists Anthology. Stick around and hopefully we can make some changes.