Choosing a Wedding Photographer

When Brendan and I began planning, we knew that we would definitely have to set priorities for what was most important for us to have at our wedding. Maybe it’s because of all the blogs I have read over the years, or maybe it’s just the sentimental part of me, but I knew right away: Photography is a major priority at our wedding.

I know some people don’t feel as strongly as I do about photography, but I am pretty confident that almost everyone wants pictures of their wedding. Even if you don’t look at them often, your wedding photos will be the longest-lasting souvenirs of your big day. Long after you’ve eaten your first-anniversary cake, long after you can’t even find your wedding dress, let alone fit into it – the pictures will still be there, helping you remember how the day looked and felt.

As I was growing up, my family always took a lot of pictures. My parents recently packed up for a cross-country move (to be closer to me!), and we sorted through many, many boxes of old photographs. Of course, some of them are so grainy and yellowed that you can barely imagine being there, but as time goes on, the quality of the images gets better and better. I am definitely thankful that we are getting married now, when digital photography is excellent and image storage is simple – we know that even if our wedding album gets lost or damaged, we will truly have these photos forever. Knowing that our pictures can actually be timeless (well, except for the outfits and hairstyles!) is definitely a selling point for investing in good quality photographers.

I was probably spoiled by all of my pre-engagement wedding blog viewing (thanks in part to being in bridesmaid A's wedding the year before), but I definitely wanted more than just pictures that captured how everything looked. I wanted artistic, beautiful pictures that captured the emotion of the day - done right, I know that photography can absolutely be moving, and I wanted our pictures to be gorgeous and full of emotion.

I have to say, photography was the first big thing that caused Brendan and I to go through sticker-shock. Wedding photographers are expensive, yo! Everywhere we looked, especially in Boston, photographers’ packages were pricey – even knowing that this would be the case, I was definitely surprised. Brendan and I even prepared to limit what we could get pictures of, or forgo engagement pictures or an album. Luckily, we persevered – with a little bit of digging, mostly on the WeddingWire reviews pages, we found a few good options. One thing we noticed was that the photographers located outside the major cities (in our case, Boston) were much more affordable – and in most cases, they were more than willing to drive anywhere around the metro area, so even if your wedding will be held in the city, I would definitely suggest shopping around a bit!

Not counting the terrible meeting we had with a husband-and-wife photographer pair (truly the most awkward encounter I’ve ever had), we met with two photographers during our hunt. We were lucky enough to schedule the meetings in the same week, which definitely helped us to compare styles and personalities. Both photographers were friendly, and we meshed well with both. Their portfolios were stunning, and we could definitely see either of them shooting our wedding. And both of them had relatively similar package pricing – it was really difficult to choose!

Ultimately, because both of our options were good ones, our decision was made on relatively small details. Although both of the photographers were friendly and professional, one of them stood just a bit above: Samantha Melanson.

Image via Samantha Melanson Photography Facebook page

Our personalities clicked immediately with Samantha, and her professionalism was obvious. Although she is young, she is definitely on top of her game – she even answered Brendan’s questions about data management and security without batting an eyelash! We could tell that with Samantha, our wedding would be in good hands.

We had our engagement session in the fall, just over a year before our wedding – more on that later, but for now, here are a few teasers!

(all above images copyright Samantha Melanson Photography)

Did you have a hard time choosing a photographer? What helped you make your choice?

Friendors and the budget-conscious wedding

When the topic of budget-conscious weddings comes up, I always feel a pang of guilt. Although we are sticking to a fairly ambitious budget (read: two-thirds of the average wedding cost for our area), I always feel as if we could do better. Brendan and I have a goal of paying off our credit cards within the next few years, and since I am still in “training” as a research scientist and just got out of graduate school a few years ago, I definitely have some debt to pay off! It’s nothing too serious, but both he and I agreed that we would like to pay for the wedding without adding to our credit card debt. But there is always this nagging thought that with the amount we will be paying for the wedding, we will be keeping ourselves from our goal of being debt-free for that much longer.

We're going to need a little more than this! (source)

When we first started trying to create a budget for the wedding (something I suggest doing before you try to nail down any details!), Brendan and I were astounded to see how much everything costs. Before we were engaged, we had always assumed that people who spend $30k or more on a wedding are going for an all-out, lavish affair – now we know that if you’re not careful, you can easily spend that much on a bare-bones wedding!

When we first decided to keep our budget relatively low, we had high hopes of our wedding being around $5,000-10,000. To be honest, anything more than that seemed crazy! But as we started looking at tips for how to keep the cost of your wedding down, everything we saw boiled down to two pieces of advice: 1) Limit your guest list, and 2) Rely on “friendors” (friends with skills that can help with your wedding) for as many things as possible.

Now, our guest list is already pretty limited – we’re inviting only family and close friends, and we think we will end up with around 85-100 guests total. Sure, it’s not a 20-person cocktail party, but we’ve kept it as small as possible for us. That leaves friendors – an idea that’s a bit of a sticking point for me.

Let me explain: Everywhere I looked on the internet, I found all sorts of articles featuring “budget-savvy” weddings, advertising vanishingly small budgets. Certainly I could do what they did and have a stunningly beautiful wedding with a low budget, right? Well, wrong. Because those weddings? Were filled to the brim with friendors. How many people actually know a professional photographer (not just someone who owns a nice camera!), a caterer, a cake baker, a videographer, a cellist, and someone with a really big barn suitable for a wedding? Not many people, I’d venture to guess. But it’s those weddings that end up on the internet – totally not realistic! Of course it’s possible to have a beautiful wedding on a low budget without knowing all of these people – but unless you have a friend who can cover one of the bigger budget items (for us, venue/catering and photography), it is significantly harder than it looks.

Still holding out for someone with a car like this! (source)

For Brendan and I, our friendors were much more limited. A family friend of Brendan’s is a DJ, and he is giving us a bit of a break (we think!) on his event pricing. And Brendan’s uncle is a deacon, so he will officiate our wedding – but this will be along with our priest, and we are still paying the charge for renting the church for the evening. We do know people who do photography and play music professionally, but their skill sets don’t really match weddings – the photographer photographs only jewelry (great for the rings, but not so wonderful for action shots), and the musicians are more rock-oriented, not very wedding-appropriate.

We love our friendors, but we certainly aren’t saving much money by using them – so what are we to do? Well, aside from generally committing to be budget-conscious, the best thing we can do is to incorporate a lot of DIY elements. Luckily, I happen to be pretty crafty, so this is the easiest thing for us to do – and the best way for us to get the wedding décor we love but not break the bank. I’d estimate we have saved about $1000-2000 just by putting together most of our decorations ourselves! And choosing a venue with all-inclusive packages (including cake and flower vendors)  certainly helps us stick to the budget, too!

How did you stick to your wedding budget? Did you have any sweet deals from friendors?

To Light or Not to Light?

We may be jumping ahead a bit in the planning process here, but as our wedding day gets closer (less than 150 days now!), new decisions seem to crop up constantly. Sure, we’ve got the big decisions down – but there are a lot of things we can still do to change the overall look and feel of the wedding. At the same time, we are also trying to figure out what else will fit within our budget. The real issue is: what is worth the splurge, and what can we skip? Right now, the two biggest things up for discussion in our house are a photo booth and uplighting.

A photo booth is something I’m definitely surprised to be considering. At first, I honestly thought it was kind of pointless – sure, it’s fun to have one, but it’s certainly not a necessity! And at the price most photo booth rentals go for, it seemed like an unnecessary expense – one that we could skip. But as time goes on and I keep reading about more and more weddings that have them, I have found nothing but rave reviews. It seems like photo booths are something that everyone can enjoy, and it would certainly keep our guests busy during cocktail hour!

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Besides, we’d have all sorts of fun pictures to remember our wedding by – it could even be another guest book of sorts!

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Luckily, our photographer offers a photo booth package for a pretty good price – we just have to get some more details from her before we can decide on whether it’s worth it to us.

The other thing we’ve been talking a lot about lately is uplighting. Admittedly, it wasn’t even something that was on my radar at first – but now that we’re in the middle of the planning process, it seems like it’s everywhere!

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I’m ashamed to admit that I first seriously considered uplighting after watching an episode of Four Weddings. Usually, that show makes me depressed – there’s nothing like watching a bunch of people tear apart each other’s weddings to make you second-guess all of your decisions. But this time, I happened to notice how beautiful one of the reception spaces looked – and it was definitely the uplighting that made the entire look.

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Brendan and I don’t really want anything too dramatic – no saturated colors or nightclub feel. But because our venue is a country club, and we really want a more rustic feel, we think that the right kind of lighting could bring a cozy atmosphere. We’re thinking soft oranges with a golden tone:

Something like this (source)

The thing is, our venue doesn’t have their own uplighting, and our DJ doesn’t offer it, either. There is definitely some research required here – if we’re going to have it, we need to find an option that won’t break the budget!

What do you think – are the photo booth and uplighting worthwhile expenses for a wedding? Any positive or negative experiences to share?

Cake and hedgehogs

What do cake and hedgehogs have in common, you ask? Well, read on and you’ll find out!

Earlier this year, Brendan and I had our cake tasting at Jacques Pastries in Southern New Hampshire. The bakery has a partnership with our reception venue, and we first met them at the open house for 2013 couples in February. It was definitely love at first bite – all of their samples were wonderful, like little fluffy bites of heaven!

Brendan, eagerly eating a cake sample - wish we'd eaten more!

We made the drive up to New Hampshire one sunny Sunday morning in March. Sure, it was a bit early for a cake tasting – more than 6 months out – but we figured we’d get in a fun task while we were in the middle of a cold winter and seeing no end to the tedium of putting together guest lists and contact information. It turned out to be the perfect activity to cheer us up! We brought Brendan’s parents along for a second opinion.

We entered the shop, excited – the beautiful cake samples in the windows definitely helped set the mood. Our consultant, Cathy, was very friendly and encouraged us to try as many samples as we wanted. Jacques has helpful little cards with all the flavors on them, but we were a bit overwhelmed with all the options. Since we described our wedding as fall-themed, Cathy suggested we try all the different fall flavors along with the basic vanilla and chocolate. Definitely a great idea!

We tried – and loved – every single one of the flavors that they brought out. It was a very difficult decision, since everything was so delicious, but we decided on three different flavor combinations, given that our cake will have three layers. Each tier can have up to three different flavors of frosting, since there are three stripes of frosting in between the smaller layers. We went with:

Bottom tier: Spice cake with two caramel buttercream stripes and one apple filling stripe. This one was Cathy’s suggestion, and was definitely our favorite!

Middle tier: Almond cake with two hazelnut buttercream stripes and one Baileys buttercream stripe. We were all surprised to like the almond cake so much (it seemed like one of the plainer flavors), but it was spectacular. This tier will taste a little more traditional.

Top tier (our anniversary cake): Espresso cake with two hazelnut buttercream stripes and one cinnamon buttercream. The espresso cake was very rich, so we felt like it might be too much for the actual wedding. For our anniversary, though, it should stay moist and delicious!

As far as the design goes, we went pretty simple. Although Jacques has some really cool designs (New England brides, check out their website if you want a really crazy cake!), we wanted our cake to feel like a traditional wedding cake. We went with a “spackle” style buttercream for our frosting, which should look something like this:

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Each layer will have an orange ribbon underneath a burlap ribbon, which will all be under a small lace ribbon. Hopefully a perfect mix of rustic and fall and romance! The final drawing for our cake looks like this:

Drawing courtesy of Jacques Pastries

And yes, those are, in fact, hedgehogs on top of the cake. Our cake toppers will be a cute little set of salt and pepper shakers I found in a store back home in MN:

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They are magnetic “kissing” salt and pepper shakers – which normally I might consider a little silly, but they are so. darn. cute. Brendan likes hedgehogs, too, and the bakery told us we are not at all crazy for using salt and pepper shakers as a cake topper. Apparently, the little holes at the bottom for filling them work perfectly for putting the shakers on the cake – who knew? We’ve made a little top hat for the “groom” and ordered a tiny veil for the “bride” from CouplesOnCakes.com, so everything should be set for the cake!

I can’t wait to taste our cake on our wedding day – and you better believe I will be getting some cake; no one comes between me and my cake!

Did you have a fun cake tasting? What is your favorite flavor?