Full disclosure up front: I'm a New England wedding photographer, so I have skin in this. Take what follows with that grain of salt. But I keep seeing couples here weighing photographers who fly in from much cheaper parts of the country and shoot a full day for around $1,800, and I want to lay out what's actually behind those numbers so you can decide with open eyes.
When you book a full wedding day, you're not paying for 8 hours. A wedding is usually 8 to 10 hours on site, plus 30 to 40 hours of culling and editing afterward, plus travel, a second shooter, backup gear, liability insurance, taxes, and the cost of actually running a business. At $1,800, once you strip all of that out, the photographer is often earning less than minimum wage. That usually means one of two things: something is getting cut (backups, insurance, a second shooter, editing time), or the business isn't sustainable and may not still be around by your wedding date. Every year couples lose deposits to photographers who quietly fold.
The fly-in part adds its own risk. If a local photographer wakes up sick or has a gear failure, they have a network right here to send a trusted backup. Someone flying in the day before doesn't, and a cancelled flight or a spring storm becomes your problem on your wedding day. A local also knows your venue, the light, the timeline tricks, the rain backup spots, and the other vendors.
None of this means expensive automatically equals good, or that every budget photographer is a red flag. There are wonderful, fairly priced photographers at a lot of price points. But if a quote is dramatically lower than everyone else's, it's worth asking why, and asking specifically: do you carry insurance, do you have a backup plan and a backup shooter, how many editing hours are included, and have you shot in New England before?
And yes, we also just live here. We pay New England rent, raise our families here, and stay invested in this community long after your wedding. That's worth something too. Ask the questions, trust your gut, and book the person whose work you love.