What Couples Should Ask a Photographer

Dana Whitfield · 27 June 2026

Portfolios are edited. These are the questions that tell you something a portfolio cannot.

Ask to See One Whole Wedding

Every portfolio is the best forty frames from several years. Ask for one complete gallery, start to finish, and you will learn more in five minutes than from the whole website.

You are looking for consistency, not peaks. A photographer who is excellent forty times and ordinary the rest of the time will produce an ordinary set of your day.

Ask Who Is Actually Coming

In larger operations the person you meet is not always the person who turns up. That is not necessarily a problem, but it should be a known one.

Get the name in the contract if it matters to you, and it usually does.

Ask What Happens When It Rains

The answer tells you whether they have thought about it. A photographer with a specific plan for your specific venue has been there or has looked into it.

It is also the single most likely thing to go differently from the plan, and general background on how the trade has approached all this over time is summarised on the wedding photography entry.