It's 2012 and the marrying demographic isn't uniformly flush enough to afford 5-8 large or more for a traditional book. Despite all their angst, many wedding photographers priced themselves out of the market and ignored changing tastes. They didn't all do great work--and still don't.
This weekend I lost out on shooting a wedding to a college girl who had a "nice camera" because they couldn't even afford my give-away "friends and family" pricing. These are the types of weddings where the couple is paying for everything themselves, all the party favors have been bought at heavy discount over a year, the wedding dress was beautiful, but bought at a discount from a place 200 miles away for under $400. The cake made by an aunt who used to do them for a living. Reception held in the old Elks hall. Maybe 40 people came to the wedding itself.
This represents the "normal" wedding these days. Very few of these are shot by the high-brow wedding photographers. If the couple wants a photographic memory, they do just what this couple did and have a friend or relative just help them out. Come to think of it, that's what my wife and I did when we got married. Really, this isn't anything new. I believe the spate of high priced weddings went out with the '90s and even at that, it wasn't really all for that long of a time.
I used to photograph for a wedding photography company that specialized in "affordable" packages. Even at those prices, it was not unusual for me to be the highest priced part of the entire wedding--sometimes as much as the rest of the entire wedding combined.
So, where does that leave us today? I used to have a jam-packed business (and made a handsome profit) when I had near giveaway prices, but I raised my prices up to trim off some of the riff-raff but evidently went too far because I crossed a pricing threshold that filtered out all but the segment of the market all the other photographers are after. No middle ground. If they can afford $1000 they can afford $5000. But if they can't afford $1000 they can't seem to afford $500 either.
For the wedding photographer, it's ALL "carriage trade" now. Either horse-drawn carriage or baby carriage. The market that used to be our bread and butter demographic doesn't even bother getting married now--they just live together.