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!
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!
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.
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…
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:
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.
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!
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
We live in an increasingly documentative society. Most of us have smart phones, and the cameras on our electronic devices are better than ever. It’s quite usual for us now to take a snap and post what we’ve been up to on social media, sharing all our experiences. But do we ever really consider the thoughts of others when posting, particularly at weddings?
I feel I’ve been talking a lot recently about this subject, having been asked to discuss it on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, when a bride recently told me at her wedding reception that there was ‘already’ a shot of her on Facebook ‘pulling a bad face.’ It was only just after dinner too. Who are you people who do this? I’d never post an image of someone looking bad online anyway but I have had people put awful ones of me up. You know the people, the ones that have to share everything they took, even the blurry ones. Can we not stop our desire to share, even when it comes to someone’s wedding day? This is why I felt it was time to write this post!
Kate Bush made the headlines recently by not allowing pictures to be taken during her gigs and we totally see her point. I’m sure we’ve all attempted to take pictures with our phones at a gig and let’s be honest, they look like utter garbage, so why bother missing the moment to look through a screen? It’s this same thought process which we need to consider for weddings too before we reach for the Instagram, and I’m sure as a guest it’s something you’ve never considered. Picture the scene, our happy couple say their beautiful vows and exchange rings. Those magic words are spoken, ‘I now pronounce you…’ and they kiss. Beaming at each other, they turn happily to their guests… and are faced with a sea of phones pointing at them. Not quite how they imagined it would be I’m sure.
Now I’m not just being trite here, we have seen this happen! To be honest, this isn’t so great for the couple. Their guests are physically in the room with them, but not actually ‘with them’ at one of the most important moments of their lives.
So how does an unplugged wedding work? Don’t worry, you don’t have to go all Kimye and seize phones at the door, just ask whoever is officiating your ceremony to make an announcement that you only want the official photographer to take photos until the signing. Most registrars we’ve seen actually do this anyway as they don’t want the disruption. The harsh reality is that many guests aren’t as considerate as a professional wedding photographer, they usually use flash, some have focus beeps enabled on their cameras, they step into the aisle, and even worse, use the red focus light which we can tell you does not work well with a white dress! Want some examples? A frustrated US photographer recently posted a blog showing some of her failed shots, as a direct consequence of guests going for theirs. It makes for an interesting read, and provoked some discussion on our Facebook page when we posted it, asking how people felt about cameras and phones at their wedding. Recent bride Katy said, “We are SO glad that we opted for an “unplugged” ceremony. We asked the registrar to request that everyone turned off their phones and cameras, and we put up signs welcoming guests to our unplugged ceremony. It meant everyone was WITH us for those 20 minutes of solemnly declaring… and it was AWESOME.” We can concur it was indeed, awesome.
So it’s not us photographers being high and mighty here, guests can, and have, disrupted our work. Saying that, we are much more casual about guest photography than many photographers we have been told about! During the rest of the day, shoot away folks, we really don’t mind. But there is definitely an argument for having your photographer be the only one shooting your ceremony. After all, you paid us your hard earned cash to capture it for you, so surely uncle Bob shouldn’t get the best shots over us?
At the time of the Kate Bush gigs, I was interviewed on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire about it, which you can listen back to here and do let us know your thoughts on this one!
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/166024733″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
Lastly, we were going to put a couple of our own fails in here, but we have decided not to. The point of this post is not to embarrass anyone but merely provoke discussion and possibly educate – so we shall leave it to your imagination, and if you look at the American website you’ll get the picture!
Lina x
We’re going to be back at the Bride Magazine Hatfield House Wedding Fayre this weekend! We’ll be in the stables where you can also watch the fashion shows, so make sure you come and find us on the balcony too!
Gain inspiration, tips and advice to plan your dream day with a fantastic selection of the area’s finest wedding specialists on hand to provide you with expert advice on all aspects of your wedding day
Free admission and goodie bag for all brides!
Catwalks at 12.30pm and 2.30pm
Enter some fabulous competitions including the chance to win your wedding reception!
We absolutely love chatting to people at wedding fayres and hearing their plans, so come see us and tell us your story! We’ll also have a special offer for any couples who go on to book us by the end of the year.
See you there!
Hatfield House Wedding Fayre September 2014 – Image of Hatfield House courtesy of Starlingjon at en.wikipedia WikiMedia Commons
Hertfordshire Wedding Photographers Lina and Tom are one of Hertfordshire’s most popular wedding photography teams, enjoying recommended status at venues such as South Farm and Offley Place.
