>>2959211Sorry, I missed this question.
My very first weddings I shot for £30 each (one of which never paid me!) on my D90 with a kit lens. Oh yeah!
I got these gigs through putting up adverts around my local village and through offering my services on a couple of bridal forums as well.
With these I made sure I had a signed statement in place that I was not professional and gave no guarantees to my work at all and it all snowballed from there.
Once I had shot a few weddings I had the beginning of a portfolio so built up a website and entered the market as a bottom feeder doing full days for £350, then £450 and so on as I built up my experience.
At the start it is tough because you do cheap weddings at shit venues with fugly brides. With the best will in the world this reflects in your work. You then get recommendations from these people but they know their friend only paid a pittance so they expect that too even if you have put your prices up. This is what I like to call the "shit wedding spiral" where you just get sucked in. Also the cheaper people always demand more, they will try and push you for a free album or other stuff. Honestly, when you breach the £1000 mark life gets much easier.
Eventually you begin to price yourself out of this market and the quality of wedding improves as does your work. You need to adjust your marketing with it though, what works for £450 brides does not work for £1500 brides.
