In this episode of Now That I’m Engaged, How Do I Get Married?, Kevin Dennis and August Yocher sit down with Jordan Roepke, award-winning wedding photographer and videographer, to unpack one of the most confusing parts of wedding planning: budgeting.

Jordan shares why most couples feel sticker shock when they start planning—and why that’s completely normal. Together, they break down the difference between “one-size-fits-all” budget advice and a values-based approach that prioritizes what actually matters to you as a couple. From photography and DJs to guest experience and expectations set by social media, this conversation helps couples understand where their money makes the biggest impact.

They also dive into why booking key vendors early matters, how experience often outweighs aesthetics, and the hard truth behind the phrase “you get what you pay for.” Jordan offers practical examples, real-world perspective, and reassurance for couples who want a meaningful wedding without blindly following tradition.

Jordan Roepke is an award-winning wedding photographer and videographer based in Nashville, Tennessee, traveling nationwide to create artful, adventurous, and epic imagery for couples who want photos that go beyond ordinary.

Highlights

1. Why wedding budgets often feel confusing and overwhelming
2. What “pay for what you value” really means in practice
3. How social media can distort wedding expectations
4. Where couples commonly under-invest (and later regret it)
5. The importance of booking experienced vendors early
6. How to prioritize meaning over comparison

Connect with Jordan:

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Connect with Kevin & August:

Website

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Pinterest

LinkedIn

All right, folks. Welcome to another episode of Now That I'm Engaged, How Do I Get Married? And we have Jordan Roepke here with us from Jordan Roepke Photography. And he's going to be talking about pay for what you value, why your wedding day budgeting may be working against you. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic. But before we do, Jordan, can you tell us a little about yourself and how we got you here today?

⁓

Yeah, absolutely. You found me on the side of the road. ⁓ You picked me up and it was very nice of you. Yeah. I mean, I was cold. I was out there for a long time. So, yeah. So my name is Jordan Roepke. I am a wedding and portrait photographer based in Nashville, serving couples all over the United States. ⁓ Actually, last year we had the privilege of photographing weddings in, I believe, 12 states ⁓ from anywhere from Cal...

⁓ You're welcome. We're there for you.

my.

Hehehehehe

wow.

Awesome!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, anywhere from California. We have photographed in Yosemite National Park. We work in Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Milwaukee, Savannah, and a bunch of other places in between, obviously besides just the national area. A lot of Atlanta weddings too. So anywhere in the US pretty much. And I run the business with my lovely wife, Leslie. Yeah.

I love it.

very nice. ⁓

When you said Yosemite, I'm like, that's probably a photographer's dream being in Yosemite because it's just...

yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it was incredible. And the couple that we had, they were actually from Chicago and they were eloping to Yosemite. And we actually spent, it was the longest wedding day I've ever had. It was 23 hours. Yeah, yeah. So we woke up at about midnight to get to Yosemite from our hotel. And then we did a sunrise ceremony at Taft Point.

wow, that's long.

⁓

Uh-huh.

which is beautiful. And then we spent the entire rest of the day past sunset in Yosemite National Park, just taking photos all over, just driving around. And it was an incredibly lovely couple, Chad and Lily, we're still friends. ⁓ And ⁓ their daughter. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they kind of just hopped in the rental car and we just drove them around and chatted and had lunch and had dinner and all that good stuff. And we made it back to the hotel at 11pm that night. So that was a 23 hour.

Yeah, I would hope so after that long.

that.

wow.

Wow.

Yeah, that is it. That's a long day. yeah.

Ready to crash, I'm sure.

yeah, yeah there was there was a couple of times on the way home. I was like, ⁓ okay. Yeah, but ⁓ but we made it we made it so it was good

Ugh.

Alright, so when couples ⁓ first start budgeting for their wedding day, what do you think they get wrong most often?

Yeah, so I think ⁓ a lot of the kind of the conventional wisdom is, if you're a couple who's just gotten married, chances are you've never been married before. ⁓ This is one of those things where there's really no reason why you should have a good understanding of what things cost for a wedding. ⁓ And, you know, according to the Googles, I think the average price of a wedding in twenty twenty six is about forty five thousand dollars ⁓ in the United States. ⁓ Of course.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

you can have whatever kind of wedding you want and whatever kind of budget you want. ⁓ So if you're a Kardashian or you're playing in the NFL or you're Selena Gomez, I'm sure you're paying millions and millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars for your wedding day. can go down, yeah. yeah, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ But I think that ⁓ for most people, you're not thinking about

or Taylor Swift. Can you imagine what that wedding's gonna cost? ⁓

Yeah.

you know, what flowers cost. You how much could flowers possibly cost? I see them on sale at Costco all the time. ⁓ And so if you show up to a vendor meeting or if you inquire with somebody and you get a little bit of sticker shock, that's totally normal because for most people you're just not in the industry. ⁓ But a lot of times you're turning to sites like The Knot or WeddingWire or blog posts or things like that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You're gonna see you know, you should put this percentage of your budget towards this I think the not is something like 40 or 50 percent towards the venue and then you 10 % towards photography and a certain percentage towards Food and a certain percentage towards your cake and a certain percentage towards this ⁓ And that's it's It's okay blanket advice, but what if you don't care about those things, you know, what if you're getting married at Yosemite National Park?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

and you have a $20,000 wedding budget. I think a wedding permit in Yosemite is like 500 bucks. Like it's not very much to get married in a national park. it just does, it's sort of the one size fits none approach.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm glad you said that because that's what I think, know, the, you know, guest counts and, you know, location and so much goes into this. so was it one size fits none? That's a, that's really good. That's a really good quote.

Well, and I also like that more vendors are talking about breaking the mold a little bit because I feel like a lot of people come in feeling that they have to put themselves in a certain box or follow these rules. And this is a buzzword we use a lot on this podcast, but just accepting more non-traditional approaches to weddings and really doing what you value.

Yeah, yeah, and

Yeah, yeah, and it applies to vendors too, right? And I will say as a wedding and a portrait photographer, you get into photography, when you become a photographer, ⁓ a lot of the beginning part of your career is sort of figuring out what do I like doing, what do I not like doing, ⁓ what do I never wanna do again? ⁓ And so for me, I love portraits, but I don't necessarily love photographing families. I love working with individuals and couples.

Hahaha

Yeah.

Mmm.

Hmm.

⁓ And so as a wedding photographer, of course, you know, family photography, group photography is a part of that. And, you know, I really believe that wedding photography is one of those genres of photography where you have to be a great real estate photographer if you're going to photograph interiors of venues and things like that. You have to be a great product photographer if you're going to photograph details. You have to be a great ⁓ photojournalist ⁓ to capture the candid moments. You have to be a great portrait photographer.

Hmm.

And all of those are sort of individual skills that not only do you have to apply well on a wedding day, but you also have to ⁓ cultivate under time pressure, you know, because that portrait session that usually you would take two hours to photograph, now you have 10 minutes. So ⁓ all that is to say that, you know, if you're a couple who is, ⁓ from my perspective, you let's say you value the portraits. ⁓

Mm.

Right.

That's gonna be a different set of wedding photographers that you're looking at than somebody who's like, I don't want you to interact with me at all on my wedding day. I want you to stand in the corner. I want you to capture all candidates, know, doing like a documentary style. ⁓ And that's another thing that I think is difficult for couples because there's a lot of buzzwords going around. You know, I'm a fine art photographer. I describe myself as a fine art photographer. I'm a documentary photographer. I'm a editorial wedding photographer. What does that even mean?

Mm.

I hear editorial a lot, yeah.

You know, like, are your wedding photos going to... Yeah, yeah, and it's ideally it's a photo to accompany text. You know, like, are you gonna have a lot of articles written about your wedding day? Probably not. I mean, maybe if you're Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez. ⁓ Yeah, but that's probably not your primary concern is what is this going to look like next to a ⁓ paragraph? You know, ⁓ your primary concern is

People ask me and I'm like, don't know.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I was gonna say it.

Yeah.

having a great day is being married to the person that you love the most in the world, is celebrating with the people who are the closest to you. And I think a lot of that can kind of get lost when you're looking at buzzwords of this, that, or the other thing.

I love it.

Okay, so I guess kind of circling back to budgeting, how can couples, or I guess, what do think people mean when they say like, pay for what you value? And how is that different from what most couples are doing when they're approaching budgeting?

Yeah, so I think that most couples, ⁓ if you're a young couple who has never been married before, ⁓ probably your template for what your wedding day is going to look like is maybe you've had friends that have gotten married, maybe you have relatives that have gotten married, maybe your older brother or older sister got married when you were younger. ⁓ For me, I am 14 years younger than my closest sibling. So I was like five, six, seven.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

when they got married, maybe even younger, I think I was like three when my sister Ariane got married. ⁓ So I don't necessarily have a big frame of reference as an adult for what a wedding should look like. Of course now I do because I've been in the industry for a number of years. But ⁓ when you're going into those things, you're like, okay, well we have to have this because that's what weddings have, right? We have to do a bouquet toss, we have to do a garter toss, we...

you

Yes.

You know, my cousin Steve did a shoe game at his wedding, so we should probably do that, you know, or whatever. ⁓ We have to have a cake, we have to have bridesmaids and groomsmen, we have to have this. And if you're kind of just checking off a list based on the things that you have seen other people do, it's gonna be very difficult to really express yourself and your relationship with your partner authentically ⁓ in that environment.

Mm.

And I feel like a lot of times, know couples now are Far more sophisticated than they've ever been before because we have social media we have You know Pinterest and we have vogue and we have Martha Stewart weddings and we have all of these publications Southern Bride magazine is a huge one down here in Nashville ⁓ That are showing you here's all the things that you could have but typically they don't have a price tag attached to them so if you're

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

looking at this beautiful yacht wedding, ⁓ you know, on, you know, off the Atlantic coast in this North Carolina marina. ⁓ my God, I really want that. Great. You have a budget of $12,000 and that is a $5 million wedding. So let's figure out what about that you really like and deal with that. ⁓

Yeah.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

And

that's not to say that you can't have a Moreno wedding on a budget. I photographed a beautiful wedding up in Wisconsin a few years ago where they had their, they actually had their reception before the wedding. They had it the night before.

Mm-hmm.

I love that. I've done a few

of those and it's fun. It actually is fun.

Yeah, it's great, right? You don't have to worry about being exhausted from an entire wedding day. You just get to party. And then the next day you gotta wake up and kinda do the official bit. But that's a great example of do what you value, right? ⁓ Being awake and aware for the party, having a full day of just beautiful photographs around Milwaukee, which that's where I'm from originally. ⁓ And it's a really beautiful city if you have a chance to go. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I was just there last summer. Yeah.

Yeah, both of us were there. What

was it? September. was we had the cheese curds. They were great. ⁓

No, were there

Yes.

in July.

July, okay, yeah.

July,

yep. And this wedding was a Fourth of July wedding and they had their ceremony at this little kind of a bunk house or a dock house at the McKinley Park Marina, which is absolutely beautiful. ⁓ And so they just rented the dock house. I think it was relatively cheap and they had it for an hour or two and they had a little DIY, not a reception because they had the reception the night before, but they had like cake and a little bit of snacks and stuff like that. ⁓

Hmm.

But you can absolutely do that on the budget, but don't try to compare that to your ⁓ New England ⁓ yacht club weddings, necessarily. ⁓ And so that's kind what I say when we're talking about value. ⁓ You can get married at a marina without necessarily having your entire wedding at a marina and paying that fee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

or having those sorts of things. So, you don't get sucked into this idea of like, have to have what Selena Gomez had, or I have to have what Taylor Swift's gonna have, because you're probably not gonna get it.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, yeah, because you got to remember the budgets are way, way different. So all right, Jordan, we're oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Uh-uh. Yeah.

Well, and I like, sorry, Kevin, I was just going to say I

really like how you said, like, you're looking at this $5 million wedding, like, let's identify the pieces that you actually like, because, you know, that would be so much easier budgeting wise to incorporate those small pieces that like, at the end of the day, you're going to look back on and really love than just the entire picture. And it's not really you, right? Like, you're just copying it, you're replicating it. It's not really what you and your cop-

you and your partner represent as a couple.

Yeah, yeah, and I think that there's something to be said too about getting close enough. know, kind of this like horseshoes and hand grenades approach to wedding planning because you might see a cake that was, let's say there's a high society wedding in New York and you love that vibe, you love that kind of architectural, urban vibe and they have this beautiful cake that's like a five layer cake and the flowers are cascading down the side and all of that stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Well, they hired a $150,000 florist and they had a ace of cakes guy bake the cake and they had their planner who's a million dollar wedding planner put that all together. And that cake altogether might've cost them $200,000 to have exactly what they wanted there. But you can go to Publix and get a pretty good cake and you can get some cheaper flowers and cascade them down the side and it can still look nice.

You

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so you have to sort of, like, am I willing to accept 90 % of this? Am I willing to accept 80 % of this? Do I really care that much about it at all? For my wife and I, when we got married, actually the first thing we decided on was the cake, ⁓ because we're a bunch of weirdos and we really like cake. And ⁓ we had a little bit of a quasi-themed wedding. ⁓ And so...

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

The very first thing we decided on before we decided, we already knew who our photographer was going to be because we're in the industry and we know that. We knew who was gonna do the hair and makeup because we know these people, they're our friends. ⁓ But we decided that before we knew what our venue was, before we knew anything like that, we decided that we wanted to have a purple tentacle cake that bled when you cut it. ⁓ And that's what we did. And it just so happened that my wife's best friend used to be a professional baker. And so she baked us our cake as a wedding gift.

Yeah.

I love it.

and it was absolutely beautiful. It was not the first thing that I had had in my head when I envisioned this purple tentacle cake, but it was absolutely beautiful and it was absolutely delicious and it did in fact bleed when you cut it. So it checked all the boxes and had we hired somebody to make that cake, it probably would have been a four or $5,000 cake because if I come to you as a professional baker and say, hey, I want a purple tentacle cake that bleeds when you cut it,

Yeah.

that's amazing.

Good, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

you're gonna have ideas and you're gonna get creative and it's gonna be expensive. ⁓ But if you're willing to sort of say, this is the general roadmap of what I want and ⁓ you're happy with what you get and it was amazing and I'm so glad that we got what we got, ⁓ then you're gonna save some money doing that. Or if you have a friend who happens to be a professional baker.

Yeah.

There you go, yep.

Yeah,

you gotta take advantage when you can. So, all right Jordan, so where do you see couples under-investing and wish they like later hadn't?

I mean, I'm obviously going to be biased, right? But it's always gonna be in the photography ⁓ for me because I would say photography and DJ are probably the two places where you're going to see couples mostly under investing. ⁓ And I think there's a few reasons for that. ⁓ But I would say the reason that I'm the most biased about those is number one,

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

your photography and your videography, if that's something that you're interested in, are gonna be the two things that you get to keep. Those are the things that you get to look back on forever. And I think a lot of people have this idea that ⁓ if I have a really beautiful, expensive venue, that it's just going to look beautiful and expensive, ⁓ as opposed to if I...

Sorry, I'm just trying to collect my thoughts here for a second. Emily! ⁓ As opposed to, if I hire someone who knows what they're doing and is able to, I don't wanna say hold my hand, right? As a photographer, I'm not there to hold my couple's hand, but I am there to direct and to guide and to ⁓ really focus on the things that matter to my couples. Then I can...

That's okay.

make a beautiful photograph anywhere. Some of my favorite photographs I've taken have been next to dumpsters, you know, and you would never know looking at it, because the light is great and there's a little bit of interesting shadow and yeah, you're behind a red Robin, you know, next to a dumpster, but who's gonna know? ⁓ And it's a beautiful photograph. And I feel like a lot of times when you think about your photographer or your DJ,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What you're thinking is, well, I just need somebody to take a couple of pictures and I just need somebody to play a little bit of music. And realistically, that is not what we do. My opinion is that as a photographer, the least important thing that I do on your wedding day is take your photo. Because you need to have time to relax. You need to have time to have a glass of wine, to have a glass of water, to eat a sandwich. You need to have time to...

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

⁓ have your hair and makeup done without somebody being in your face the whole time. And if that hair and makeup takes longer, you need to be able to trust that the person that is capturing those photos can say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna go over to the guys real quick. I'm gonna get their stuff knocked out and just sort of rearrange the day in a way that makes sense and is a practical flow. And the same thing with DJs. There's a really good chance that your guests are not gonna remember what they ate a cocktail hour. There's a really good chance that an

unless it is the best or the worst meal that they have ever had, that they're not gonna remember what you've served for dinner. ⁓ But what they will remember is how banging that party is. And they will remember that it wasn't awkward because it took five minutes to round up the bridesmaids for the bouquet toss. Or they're going to remember that the party was bumpin' and everything flowed really well and they knew what was going to happen.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

and a really great DJ is going to keep

that flowing. ⁓ And so it's not just about, here's a playlist that I made on Spotify and I'm gonna plug it into a speaker. there's that sort of that, going back to that idea of couples being very sophisticated but not necessarily having the context of these things because the best DJs that I work with, if they kick a song off and anybody leaves the dance floor, whoop, new song. You know, that's gonna change.

Yep.

⁓ and they're gonna pump up the crowd, they're gonna hype people up, they're gonna engage the audience, engage your guests. ⁓ And that's what people are gonna remember about your wedding.

Yeah, I always think about that one Maya Angelou quote where it's like, people will forget what you said and what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And I feel like it's the same for weddings. Like you said, taking the photo is least important part, but taking care of them as a couple and addressing their needs and guiding them through the day is really what is going to stand out to them.

Love it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, you're sort of paying for, you're paying for confidence, really, more than anything else. And you can hire a photographer for, oh, well, don't hire a photographer for 500 bucks, but you could if you wanted to. Yeah, I mean, really, anything can be as expensive or as cheap as you want, right? Like if you have an uncle with a camera or a friend from church, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

a Greggs list.

You can get free photography. Everybody in the world walks around with a great camera in their pocket all the time. And I will tell couples, if somebody comes to me and they're like, hey, we have about $1,000, $1,500 for our wedding photography. And I tell people, first of all, I don't recommend anybody hires a photographer or a videographer who's charging less than $3,500. It's just risky.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

to

Yeah.

do that and there's a whole lot of mathematical reasons why that don't really matter to people, right? You should never have to worry ⁓ as if you like somebody's work, you should be able to have confidence that they're gonna show up and they're gonna do the job and they're gonna do a great job and all those things, but sadly, that's not the world that we live in. ⁓ And so if somebody comes to me and says, hey, I have about 1500 bucks to spend on photography, can you work with that budget? What I always tell them is here's my advice for you.

because if you have $1,500 to spend on your photography, it doesn't sound like photography is really that important for you. And that's not demeaning anyone. Everyone has a budget, right? It's very important. ⁓ But it doesn't sound like if you only have $1,500 to invest, that photography or videography or whatever it is is that important for you. So what I would recommend that you do is I'd recommend that you put up signs all over your wedding that says,

Yeah.

We love you, we would love to see our wedding day through your eyes. Please take all the photos in the world with your phones. And here's a QR code, here's a Dropbox link, here's a hashtag, here's any of that stuff. And just share those photos with us at the end of the day. And take that $1,500 and invest in something that you do value. Have a longer honeymoon, have a better cake, feed more people, have a midnight snack.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

You know, I tell everybody, if your wedding budget is $11,000 and you wanna wear a $10,000 dress, do it. Figure the rest of it out, you know? But if you hire a $1,500 photographer, you may get good photos. You may get great stuff. But there is a chance that you're gonna get bad photos or you're going to be unhappy. There's a good chance you're gonna be unhappy. If you have all of your guests take photos all day,

Yeah.

Yep.

There's a good chance. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

you

absolutely will get bad photos, but you might get some pretty great ones too. So that's just a better use of time. I had ⁓ a young lady inquire with me and she had a very low budget for photography, but she was saying, yeah, you one of the things I thought to save money was I was gonna get a bunch of disposable cameras and put them on all the tables. And I looked on Amazon and to see she was planning on having 150 guests.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

and I looked on Amazon to see what that would cost. It would be $3,500 worth of disposable cameras to give every guest 24 photos. And that's not $10 per camera for developing, 10 to $20 per camera for developing. So that's another $1,500 to $3,000. And then you're gonna get underexposed, badly framed, photos of people's feet, kids are gonna grab them off the table and just eyeball.

They're not cheap.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

no flash on, you know?

no

flash or terrible flash or it doesn't matter anyway, you're just not gonna get a lot of good stuff. And I have a really good friend of mine who, when we first started doing weddings, he was like, we have boxes in our attic of disposable cameras that we had at our wedding that we never had them developed. And you're gonna spend, so $3,500 for 150 disposable cameras.

Yeah.

my gosh.

1500 to another $3000 of developing costs. So you're gonna spend $6500 on bad photos? No. And if you want it retro, like I see a lot of people using the Instax cameras at their wedding day. But if you're willing to pay $6500 for bad or no photos, just.

Yeah.

Yeah, those things don't take good quality stuff. Yeah.

Yeah.

Pay me. And I'll come do it for you. Yeah, you know, or save that money and invest in, like I said, invest in what you value. ⁓ Get something else. There's always something else you can do.

Yeah, and get good stuff.

No, for real.

Yeah.

Yeah, it always it's funny when you were talking about use your you know use the phone it just I have photographer friends that'll take you'll see me taking a photo at the wedding and they'll take my phone and then like Do whatever you guys do to it and I'm like, oh, yeah, and I'm like, I Never even knew it could do that. It's pretty amazing what they what they can do once you really really know how to use them You know, I'm like how we just hit a button so

The lighting, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the thing about phone cameras, right? Is they're pretty much designed to be idiot-proof, right? They're designed to be, my kid is running down the beach and he looks really cute and I'm just gonna whip my phone out and pop a photo and it's gonna look fine, you know? And there's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it really is.

No, no. All right, Jordan, as a photographer, how do you see the budget decisions directly impact the final images or overall experience at a wedding?

⁓ I mean, I would say that it's a little bit of a double-edged sword ⁓ when it comes to investing or not investing because like I said, as much as I feel like couples are very sophisticated, a lot of people just really don't have an in-depth idea of what goes into it. And not only that, like we live in a cell phone camera world, right? Like TikTok is...

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

cell phone cameras, like what you are seeing 99 % of the time is camera phone stuff, unless you're a photography nerd like me. ⁓ In which case you follow all of these super high end photographers and their Instagram feeds look incredible, right? But most people have become so accustomed to bad photography ⁓ that it's hard for them to really kind of see a good photograph. And for any couples that are listening, I'm not talking down to you. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

It's just that the way that the world is, I'm sure you have impeccable taste, everyone who is listening to this podcast. ⁓ But yeah, exactly, yeah. You're listening to this podcast, of course you have impeccable taste. ⁓ But one of the things that I do as a photographer to try to make myself stand out is that I always try to produce an image that would be impossible to produce with a phone. ⁓ So with, you

Yeah.

Disclaimer, yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm, I love that.

probably 90 % of what I do is just like anybody else would do. Your documentary style photography, your candid moments, natural light in the moment, all of those sorts of things. if I can create an interesting piece of art, ⁓ like you might see behind me on the thing that I have behind me there, if I can use my expertise to create something where Aunt Sally standing over my shoulder. ⁓ Actually, I had a wedding a few months ago where

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ One of the bridesmaids was the designated content creator for the day. ⁓ And so she was standing behind me, which is where I prefer other people to be if they're taking photos, just so that you don't get my shot. Yeah, you can absolutely shoot whatever you want. Just stand right over my shoulder, follow me around, you're all good. And she was shooting her photos and she could see the back of my screen on my camera.

Mmm.

Yeah.

and she took a photo and I took a photo and she took a photo and I took a photo and she took a photo and I took a photo and she put her phone away and she was like, you got it. Like this is, I'm not getting what you're getting for whatever reason. ⁓ And that is the sort of experience that you're sort of missing out on if you just go for the budget option, ⁓ if you book those people who are important to you late in your buying decision.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's another thing too is like, you know, if you are if you are trying to book a venue if you're trying to book a florist if you're trying to book a photographer if you're trying to book ⁓ You know someone who is really really great at their craft. You got to book them 12 to 18 months in advance ⁓ and Since kovat what I will say is I have been getting inquiries like the two inquiries that I get the most are I'm getting married in six weeks and I'm getting married in three years ⁓ and not a lot in between

Yeah.

Yep.

⁓ And so I understand where you go, ⁓ man, we're getting married in six weeks and we still haven't booked a photographer. my God. But the problem is now you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, Like you have to worry about availability and you have to worry about budget because you've already spent your budget. And if I'm the first person that you talk to three years out and I can educate you a little bit and we can have a conversation about what's important for you ⁓ and you decide that.

Mm-hmm.

I'm the guy that you wanna work with and I tell you, hey, it's gonna be $8,500 for us to photograph your wedding. Now you can plan around me. If you're coming to me, it's Tuesday and you're getting married on Friday and your pockets are turned out and your affirm card is jacked up and your credits maxed out and oh my God, I love your work, you're incredible, I can't imagine working with anyone else, can you do it for $300? It's like, mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

you might have to start imagining working with somebody else. And I hate to do that, I hate to do that, because I love working with my couples and the people that I connect with. it's not a budget and a price thing for me, it's just about what makes sense. ⁓ And it's hard when you're doing this for a living and when you're in the industry and you're used to these sort of numbers and then you talk to somebody who's just coming in basically off the street saying,

Yeah, yeah ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

my

God, I just got this ring yesterday. Isn't it beautiful? ⁓ What do things cost? And it can be daunting.

Yeah,

well, and costs continue to rise, rise, rise, you know, and that's.

yeah,

that's another thing too, is for some reason there seems to be this reverse effect in the wedding industry. I don't know if you guys have seen that, but the higher prices come for everything else, the less people wanna pay for photography. And especially with the resurgence of film photography and that being sort of an important thing. And I understand kinda why that's coming back.

Yeah.

Hmm.

⁓ Because with the rise of AI and a lot of the things like that, you want things to feel real and you want things to feel authentic and maybe a little less perfect because AI is too perfect. ⁓ Film is expensive. ⁓ So if you're... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It really is.

It's one of my hobbies I do on the side and it's not

a cheap one for sure. ⁓

No, mean, 20, 30 bucks a roll for

God, these used be like what, or

professional grade film.

five bucks back in the day, I feel like. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean if that, you know,

⁓ and then the, I mean I could go off on a whole tirade about, you know, why film costs what it does and all that stuff, but. ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that could be another episode.

was the class I took in freshman year of high school,

photography, and we actually had a, we would develop it and print, do the whole thing, and yeah, with all the chemicals, and yeah, it was crazy back in the day.

Yeah, and

now it's just not the time anymore. It's also the cost. When something is 50 cents and it takes you three hours to do, that's one thing, versus when something is $30 and it takes you three hours to do, that's a whole nother calculus.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, love it.

Well, and I would say, Kevin, I feel like in our, you know, neck of the woods, I feel like we've had a few photographers who have kind of shared with us, their struggles with the prices rising and this like kind of new wave of couples coming in. Like photographers and florists, feel is where it's getting hit hard.

Yeah.

Well, and the photographers in our market, their market all of a sudden, because we're in the Bay Area, know, so it's saturated right now. So it just, and so that's where some of the real ones, you know, the guys that have been around for a long time are really having to work hard to get the numbers that they used to have for their wedding. So, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ huh.

Yeah,

yeah. And we will be talking about that on the next podcast. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah, and I think that it is important to understand, like, there's a lot of moving parts when it comes to things like photography and florals is a great example. ⁓ Because not only is it expensive, most flowers are imported.

Next podcast, yeah. Yeah, so.

Yes. Hop on over to Mind Your Wedding Business.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ And if it's not seasonal in the United States, but it is seasonal somewhere else, like you're paying import fees and tariffs are a thing. ⁓ And you have to have somebody who is able to order those flowers, who is able to front the money for those flowers, who's able to store those flowers over an appropriate period of time. ⁓ And so if you want real flowers, that's gonna cost you money.

Yeah.

and there are some really great fake flowers and maybe everything is fake but your bridal bouquet. Maybe those are the compromises that you make. ⁓

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, fake

flowers had come along. The other day I did a wedding and I had no idea they were fake. And I was shocked when I found it because I watched the florists at the end of the night take them and put them back in a truck. I was like, those weren't real. But they've come such a long way from what they used to be.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

So, all right, Jordan, what's the hard truth about wedding budgets that couples don't want to hear?

You get what you pay for, man. Like that is the hard truth, you know? And it is easier than ever before for somebody to pick up a camera and take a great photo. is contradicting what I have just said. It is cheaper than ever before for somebody to pick up a camera and take a great photo. That does not make that person a great photographer. And one thing that...

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hehehe

Mm-hmm.

I tell all my couples when we have a Zoom consult is I have photographed about 150, 160 weddings at this point in my career. My website, if you go to my website and I have 150 incredible photos, I only need to take one good photo of a wedding. Now how mad would you be if you got your wedding photos back

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and there were 1200 terrible photos and one really good one. ⁓ But that's all I need to have a great looking website. That's all I need to have an incredible Instagram feed is just to get lucky one out of 5,000 times. ⁓ yeah, yeah. I mean, with camera technology right now, I could probably close my eyes and just,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Which the odds are in your favor I feel like

Which would probably happen. Yeah.

around a room and end up with something. And, you know, all it takes is Selena Gomez to post kind of a weird, blurry, badly cropped photo from her wedding. And then all of a sudden, really bad photographers are really expensive. You know, no offense to my blurry photographers out there. But I think it's so hard to

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

to be inundated with what we see online. You have this idea of exposure versus information, right? You're exposed to all of this content 24 hours a day, especially with the algorithms. Like you change your relationship status to engaged on Facebook. It's like, this torrent of everything. Yeah, I mean everything. Because Facebook is just like,

Mm-hmm.

Bam. ⁓

ads

We know what you wanna see right now. ⁓ And you're just being inundated with this stuff and you're exposed, but you're not being given any information about that at all. ⁓ It's just content. It is not informative in any way, form. So when you're looking at the Marina wedding or the Selena Gomez wedding or something in Vogue or something, you're following,

Mm-hmm.

these high-end wedding planners just to see, just to get some inspiration for what you want or you're following high-end photographers, your Jose Villas and Villas and all that stuff. I actually don't know how you pronounce his last name. I've only seen it written. Jose Villa, Vanessa Joy, whoever, know, whoever your photographer of choice is, you're following them and you see all these beautiful photos. You don't realize that he charges 50, $60,000 a wedding.

think it's via.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

and

you wanna try to find somebody who's gonna do that for $1,700, and you can get close, like I said, right? Are you okay with that being 60%, 70%, 80%, 90 % of the way there? But what you don't understand with that last 10 % is that it's not necessarily the photography that you're paying for.

90, yeah.

Mm.

It's the security, it's the experience, it's the, you know, I'm a Mac guy as I'm sure a lot of people are. And I will tell you when you get that new laptop and you have the whole like, boom, experience of opening up that box and it's like so precisely engineered. And then I bought my wife a new laptop. It was her first Mac and she opened it in the car and she opened it up and it went.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mmm.

and she like slammed it shut. She was like, what just happened? Because she's never, she's used to like, know, the battery's dead and like, you gotta charge it for three hours before it works. But like, that's the experience, right? Like you open up the box and it works and it's beautiful. ⁓ And that's what you really are paying for when you hire professionals. You're paying for something that just works. ⁓

Yeah

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're okay with the DIY thing, you can absolutely save money. But I promise you, for every dollar that you spend on any professional that you choose to purchase or choose to hire, you're gonna save at least $5 worth of stress.

I love it. Yeah. And we're Apple fiends here. Or at least I'm an Apple fiend. I have a lot of Apple. Yeah.

and time, you know?

Yeah, all of the above.

Yeah.

No, I think we all are. He's on another level though.

But I think if you're in a creative,

yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if you're in a creative environment, if you do something that is media related, if you do something that is creative and you need something that will always work, ⁓ it's kind of the only option, you know?

Yeah.

It really is.

Yeah. Anyway, I get excited. It's like my... I'm an NFL fan. I love the Super Bowl, but it's like my Super Bowl anytime they do a launch, you know, and I literally block myself off in the calendar, have it going on in the TV in my office. I'm ready to see what I'm going to buy next. anyway. I'm a nerd. That's one of my nerded out things. So anyway.

His Super Bowl.

of

Don't schedule Kevin for anything at that time. So funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same,

same, absolutely.

All right, Jordan, we're going to wrap up here. We've been going for a while, but ⁓ how can folks get a hold of you, get in contact with you?

Absolutely, on all of the socials, I am at Jordan Roepke Photography, J-O-R-D-A-N-R-O-E-P-K-E Photography, and you can also find me at www.jordanrepkephotography.com.

All right, love it. And Jordan, we will have all your information in the show notes and we will be blasting it out to everyone as well as we'll get you out there. So all right.

Perfect, perfect. Well, somebody in

the Bay Area who's listening to this, hire me so I can go hang out with these two. Perfect, yeah.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, please please do so.

All right, Jordan, it was a pleasure having you on. Hopefully we'll have you back another episode soon. I'd love that. Yeah. And folks, that'll be it. We're wrapping up another episode of Now That I'm Engaged, How Do I Get Married? We'll see you next time.

Absolutely, happy to.

Bye! ⁓