Weddings drop off

I have been shooting weddings for about 25 years I always had a local photographer book MOST of my work. In the past few years it has really been dropping off. Have you guys felt the pinch or is it just me? If so what are you doing to get the phone ringing? We update our prices, there are'nt too many other video guys in our area.

[Greg Fiske]

Randy,
The knott shows 20 competitors in your area? Maybe the vdslr shooters are taking away business?

[Randy Johnson]

I need to check out those other guys but we dont really have that kind of market here.

[Tom Sessions]

Randy, I think everone is feeling the pinch, but just won't admit it. I myself have been hit pretty bad this year as well. I've noticed alot of guys are changing the "post" dates on thier blogs to make it look like they are keeping busy when, in reallity, they haven't had work for months...especially noticeable on the high-end side.

I've been playing around with ad copy and pricing just to see if it will strike a chord with any visitors and so far, that has been a dead end. This could be the year a bunch of people bail out of the biz.

[Louis Maddalena]

I don't know if weddings are slowing down here or If the clientele I usually attract is starting to tighten their budgets, but my phones have not been ringing as much as they used to.. which is ok, as I'm trying to transition into more corporate work (and maybe the brides somehow know this lol)

[Alen Koebel]

"maybe the brides somehow know this"

The PowerPoint slides in your last wedding video gave it away. :)

[Louis Maddalena]

lol.. no power points in wedding videos!

btw, why was this moved to the sample gallery? there is no video here.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Part of the reason is that couples are putting off getting married. Partly it's the economy. Partly it's the way society is changing.

In my area, the last time I checked the county website, the number of marriage licenses issued has been declining year by year. Plus, the percentage that actually went through with the marriage has declined too. The number of certificates was down to roughly 1/3 of the licenses issued.

[Craig Vincent]

My business has declined this year. The other videographers in this area must also be seeing it, as most have reduced their prices by as much as 50%.

Also, from the few couples who have inquired but not booked, the feedback is they went with companies who do both Photography and Video.

[Jay West]

In my area, the demand for wedding videos has really dropped off this year. SInce I'm the only wedding videographer in a 200 mile radius, it is not because I'm losing business to the SLR crowd. My research on this shows four related reasons for the drop-off in my area.

1. What Roger said. The county clerk, the local ministers and priests and the judges all tell me much the same.

2. Our local mountain wedding chapel (where I used to get a lot of business) closed up shop last year.

3. The rural economy. While we did not see the high unemployment/foreclosure crisis that beset other parts of the country, rural Montana is basically a third world economy where basic costs are skyrocketing. For example, diesel fuel is staying well above $4/gallon and rural electric coops are seeing their costs triple. Numbers of ranchers have told telling me that they are making less net income than twenty years ago.

4. The urbanites(or what passes for them in this part of the world): a lot of them (particularly the recent college grads) have iPhones and pocket-cams that shoot HD video. They have their friends make and assemble "good enough" videos for them. I have been seeing a lot of this kind of video at the dance recitals and theater productions that I shoot. (People are still willing to buy my multi-cam DVDs, but I have to position cut-away cameras for times when several parents are holding iPhones overhead with screens facing to the rear).

All four of these seem to have seriously affected the wedding side of my business. Fortunately, the other parts of the business (events, legal, and promotional videos) has picked up.

[Noel Lising]

I see a different trend happening in Toronto. Looks like my summer is lean but Fall is looking good, could be Brides wanting to save money, venues tend to charge less from October to February.

Overall though I am projecting to shoot 15 wedding this year down from 25 last year.