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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Why I don't have my wedding photos on my wall...

I can't emphasis enough how important it is to hire a good wedding photographer. It's the one lasting memory you have to remember that day you spent planning for months. I mean, what other occasion do you plan down to your underwear? You do your nails, your hair, you buy the dress. You pick the location, the menu, the table settings. You hire someone to marry you and work out who drives to the wedding in what. You plan your music. And it's pricey stuff. Getting married will seriously put a dent in your savings or house deposit. It will deplete your holiday fund. And if you're lucky it will happen once in your lifetime.


These days odds are if you're planning a wedding you probably have a friend or cousin or Uncle Bob with a DSLR. They're relatively inexpensive and they will take nicer photos than your point and shoot. If you take a look on google or your local noticeboard there will be advertisements for a veritable smorgasbord of photographers. It's confusing stuff. Some are offering discs of all images - the images are different sized, some can be printed and some can't. Some offering only prints. Some are offering coffee table books and albums and discs and their grandmother's dog in order to get the gig. Obviously you can only hire who you can afford. I don't advocate going into huge debt to get your wedding images. But as a client recently said to me, "cutting corners just to save a couple of bucks is a false economy when you don't get what you want."

I shoot with myself and a second photographer so that we don't miss vital 'moments'. We begin with the bride getting her hair done and end the day with a mock cake cutting. We generally come home with thousands of images - literally. I go through them and cull them to the very best ones - a few hundred. I edit each of those images tastefully and carefully. I upload them to a password protected online gallery so you can choose your favourites and then depending on your package you get a variety of prints and a varying amount of files on disc. The prints are archive quality, the packaging the best quality in Australia. Because I'm picky like that. I probably won't be the cheapest quote you get. But your wedding photography should cost more than a television. It's a lifetime gift. It is forever.

I don't have a single photo of my wedding up in my house. I actually can barely stand to look at them. It's not even that they are bad but they are boring and old school images. They don't really tell the story of the day. I wish often that I had really researched my photographer. To make it up to myself (and my husband) I thought maybe for our 10 year anniversary we could do a couples shoot with someone awesome in formal wear or something quirky (because I love quirky) and that will be cool and I'll be glad for it but I'll always be disappointed that I don't have the actual wedding day images. We'll never look that way again and not just because now I've got a few more wrinkles and he has a little less hair. But we'll never again look at each other as husband and wife for THE FIRST TIME.

So please while you are planning your wedding take the time out to really search out the perfect photographer for you. See if you can view one of their weddings - start to finish - so you can see exactly what sort of collection you'll get - not just the few photos that were the cream of the crop. Have a look at their editing and see whether it is still going to look fantastic in 20 years. Sure black and white with just your bouquet in colour might be a bit different now but in 20 years time it could be a bit like the mullet....a good idea at the time but kind of cringeworthy now.

When I take your wedding images I want to give you something you can put on your wall. Because I don't have any wedding images on mine.


6 comments:

Rana August 24, 2011 at 2:46 PM  

Such a great post Mel, and so true!

amanda August 24, 2011 at 3:22 PM  

Very true! Big but important investment.

Anonymous August 24, 2011 at 7:05 PM  

Totally! I was lucky with both my weddings, the first time I found someone who worked well for me but I didn't get the ONE pic I wanted your "typical" bridal party shot, you know the shot that you have looked at forever in your parents house. The photographer did however do some awesome things with the processing and I got some really unique photos.

For my second wedding we actually had no choice, we got married on Magnetic Island so we got THE photographer.... Luckily she was experienced in beach weddings and I have photos everywhere!

Chrissy Torney August 24, 2011 at 8:40 PM  

Awesome post and so, so true!

casso August 24, 2011 at 9:12 PM  

True, true, true! Great post Mel!

Jen Stocks August 25, 2011 at 6:45 AM  

Great post! I agree you need to check out a whole wedding, and can't just go off a portfolio where they choose the best photos.

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