Ten years of Lina & Tom: 10 top tips for your wedding planning
On July 4th we celebrated 10 years since our first wedding as the official photographer. Over those ten years, we have seen trends come and go, experienced all kinds of wedding from an intimate guest list of 10 to a 400 strong raucous farmers wedding. We’ve travelled from Cambridge to Cancun and beyond. We’ve seen laughter and happy tears, and some not so happy (but only some…) We’ve learned from every single one, all of them. We’ve attended conferences, workshops and seminars, constantly striving to be better for our clients, and the next one is in November. We’ve won various international awards for individual wedding photos and overall as a couple. We had too had a wedding in 2014, allowing us to call ourselves one of the UK’s best husband and wife wedding photography teams (natch.) Lina has spoken about our work and brand at various conferences including the Fearless Photographers European Conference, for which she still pinches herself. She also had our logo tattooed on her arm after that, Tom…well not yet.
Our ten top tips for your wedding planning
So as we’re in this historic month for our business, and have just shot our 322nd wedding on the beautiful island of Guernsey, we are going to kick off a series of ’10 Years…’ blogs starting with the 10 top tips for your wedding, what we have learnt from all our experience. These are certainly not meant to dig at anyone, but rather convey things we see time and time again and hope to give a little tried and tested advice… So, in no particular order:
10 Creative Twists on Wedding Traditions – So You Can Be You!
You know us, we are 100% when it comes to encouraging you to eschew the standard wedding traditions and do things your way – it always makes for the most interesting weddings!
Today on the blog we welcome BiBi Raven of Truly Experiences who has some great ideas to shake things up a bit when it comes to your wedding. Some of these we’ve started to see, so hopefully you can be inspired to go for what makes you happy!
Upcoming Wedding Shows for Lina and Tom
As the summer heatwave fades I don’t know about you but I am starting to look forward to Autumn; the turn of the trees and that renewed sense of starting afresh (we may also be going on holiday, but nothing to do with that of course!)
You may have put your wedding planning aside to enjoy the summer or maybe you’re newly engaged and want to get cracking! We’ll be at two fab wedding shows in September so why not come along and have a chat about your wedding photography? Reading this and thinking of someone else, do let them know where we will be!
Our business exists because of the amazing referrals from our clients, it is so important for us, so if you know someone engaged, please pass on our details!
A super start to spring wedding season – April wedding photography round up
As autumn is drawing ever closer, let’s take a look back to our April wedding photography – perfect for spring wedding planning and inspiration – and particularly if you are getting married at beautiful South Farm where we are delighted to be a recommended wedding photographer.
Why use a wedding planner? 5 key reasons from wedding planners R&F Weddings
We’ve been lucky to shoot a vast number of weddings over our nine years as wedding photographers, and one of the biggest changes we’ve seen to the industry is a wealth of new and exciting places to have a wedding day. You may be eyeing up dancing the night away in that warehouse space, or maybe a beautifully vintage village hall wedding is your dream. One thing is for certain, if you are not getting married in a traditional venue, having some sort of connection with a wedding planner is pretty essential in our books, and many of you have heard us harp on about the importance of on-the-day wedding coordination at least. So who better to talk through when hiring a wedding planner might be for you than the brilliant Vanessa and Dom from R&F Weddings…
WEDx – A new series of seminars for the wedding industry
WEDx – Seminars for the wedding industry
We’re happy (and a teensy bit nervous) to announce that Lina is confirmed as a speaker at the inaugural WEDx – seminars for the wedding industry, or in their words “a brand spanking new series of seminars for people who are serious about taking their business to the next level.”
Taking place at Wyboston Lakes on Monday 8th May 2017 from 9am, the day will feature six speakers working within the Wedding Industry. Each speaker will hold a Q&A Session following their talk to ensure that your burning questions get answered, as well as the invaluable opportunity of networking with a community of likeminded people. The speakers kicking off this first event alongside Lina are:
International Women’s Day: It’s OK to not feel ‘strong’
Happy International Women’s Day! I have to start saying that really, as it was seeing this a lot on social media today that prompted me to write this post (and I want to). When I checked Facebook this morning, it encouraged me to share a post wishing a happy IWD to my girlfriends (just like it told me to share Happy Mother’s Day a couple of days ago – how would we remember anything these days without it?), and I see many of my lovely ladies have posted various images wishing us all the same.
Knebworth Wedding Show back this weekend!
It’s that time of year again! We’ll be back at The Wedding Show Knebworth House and Barns this weekend for the fourth year running, Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th January 2016. We love exhibiting at the Knebworth Wedding Show because of the time of year, everyone is buzzing – from the newly Christmas engaged couples to the couples who have kept their planning relaxed to date, but it’s all systems go after Christmas!
As always we’ll be exhibiting alongside some brilliant fellow suppliers, over 80 apparently! We’re all here to help you plan the best day ever and keep it stress free! There will also be the brilliant catwalk show which is a must-see, held three times each day to inspire and help you find ‘the dress’ and give ideas to your guests, as well as live singing from wedding artists. Head to us at stand 113 and you’ll likely see Tom perfecting the boys dance routines! (He loves to boogie.)
The show runs from 10am to 4pm both days, so grab your other half or mum and the girls, and come and have a glass of champagne to kick off your planning! The first 100 brides through the door each day will receive a goody bag packed full of treats and samples to take home, and everyone will get a copy of 2016 Bride Magazine – look out for our coverage of Ros & Robin’s wedding on page 52!
Tickets are on sale for £4 each or £12 for a group of four in advance here. Tickets are £5 each on the day.
See you there!
It’s our turn: Less than six weeks until wedding day!
Thanks to those of you who have said you’ve enjoyed reading my wedding planning posts, and sorry this latest one has been such a long time coming. The thing is, I don’t think we were ever going to have a normal planning process, knowing it would be increasingly difficult for us to focus on it during the busy part of the season. At the same time, I’m not sure we realised just how busy we would be. Almost every email we have received from our lovely clients has started ‘hope your wedding planning is coming along’ or ‘how is the wedding planning coming?’ and it became hard to say, ‘erm not very well’ without sounding contrite. People also say ‘oh you must be winding down now’, but with three weddings in October and November respectively, as well as the ‘albums for Christmas’ deadline looming, we can safely say it’s pretty full on here still. Not that I am complaining mind, it’s brilliant that weddings are no longer a May to September thing anymore.
Of course, it is fine, all the big things were booked in the spring so it will all happen, but we want the little things to happen too. Now I’m the first person to tell our couples ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ but we really want the little details to work. We don’t want our wedding to look like all the similar albeit beautiful weddings we see in magazines. The fact that we work in the industry makes us want the little details that make this wedding ours all the more.
A bit of a confession… I suffer from serious work guilt. If there is work to do I find it hard to enjoy doing things for myself as a little voice in the back of my head is telling me someone is waiting for their wedding photos or book proof. This has definitely hampered our wedding planning. Our invites, designed by Tom, sat in bits for about two months waiting for their final flourish. Our evening invites aren’t even out yet (sorry folks!)
Last week though, we were jolted into wedding planning again. I had my first dress fitting, and having not seen her since March, it was reassuring to remind myself I had made the right decision and I still loved it. We had our venue planning meeting and tasting, great to see it again as we hadn’t been back since we booked it in March (unheard of apparently!) so we were forced to make some decisions on the spot which probably did us good! Thursday brought our registrar planning meeting, and we finished choosing our wording in the car on the way, having started in on another car journey a few weeks before. We tried on prototypes of our fab wedding rings. I was forced to think about our wedding and it was lovely (but put in a few late nights to get back up to speed with work.) It’s probably a good thing though that as people demand info it is forcing us to do it!
So here we are, less than six weeks to go. I’m finding it really hard to get excited yet, as it still all seems so far removed from me. We have our pre-wedding shoot tomorrow which should make it feel more real, as well as my hen do at the weekend. Oh and you know all you folk who tell us how nervous you are about being photographed, and we say a pre-shoot is essential? Well here we are and I am terrified. I am quite genuinely unphotogenic, no really I am. We’ll see how that goes shall we?
Lina x
