There is always a way to save money when it comes to planning your wedding. With photography, your costs are a direct result of your choices at each step of the wedding planning process. Let’s look at all the different ways you can save some money!
Let’s start with the engagement portrait. Instead of paying $75 or more for a professional engagement photograph, you can take a picture yourself with a good camera. Look at the engagement notices in your newspaper, and take your picture with a similar background and similar pose.
If you want some great quality wedding pictures, but don’t really want hundreds of them, you might consider just hiring a professional photographer for pictures at the church. Along with capturing the ceremony, you can have all the bridal party shots, pictures with the parents, and so forth, done at the church directly following the ceremony. This will save a lot of money because the ceremony is usually during the day, and you are only hiring their services for a few hours, as opposed to all day. You can assign 3 or 4 guests to be your ‘reception photographers’ and give them a list of shots you want them to be sure to get. In addition, you might decide on disposable cameras at each table for your guests to take pictures of each other during the evening. Photographers have afternoon packages that can save you 10% or more on your photographs.
The Bride and Groom’s Album is the main reason for having photographs taken at your wedding. You have many choices here. Although you can purchase an excellent quality album that will last a lifetime, you can also choose lesser costing albums that will also last many years. Moderation is a good thing, and a medium quality album is a great choice. If having a leather, engraved photo album is not important to you, buy your own photo album somewhere else.
Many photographers create proofs, which are 5″ x 5″ photographs that you will use to choose your final prints. You can arrange to purchase these proofs instead of having 5″ x 7″ prints made of the same photographs. These proofs are great to make your own little albums for your parents, your wedding party, and any other special people who contributed to your wedding day. By not purchasing parents’ albums or gift folios for your wedding party, you will save hundreds of dollar over the cost of the proofs that you will purchase. You need to decide if engraved parents’ albums with 5″ x 7″ prints are important for you to do, or whether a small album purchased locally filled with the proofs will suffice.
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When you go to speak with your photographer, you will want to decide what photos you want them to take: engagement photo, before wedding photos, ceremony, reception, and formal and group portraits.
Digital photography has changed the landscape of wedding photography. Some photographers have fully embraced the digital age with many great options available to you. Here we will cover some of the options that are out there, but not all of them are available everywhere because this is still a new part of the wedding industry. If you are interested in something specific, you will have to ask to see if the photographers you are considering are doing what you are interested in.
Let’s look at the TIME options you have for your wedding. If you have a large guest list, and limited funds, choosing the right time for your wedding is a great way to make your wedding work for everyone.
Step 5 is about defining your wedding colours. If you have seen my wedding colour video or the document called Wedding Colour Choices Made Easy, you will know that there is a way to use a colour wheel to figure out what colours go together.
Here we will address step 7 of Defining Your Wedding Vision – the wedding location. Your wedding location is an important factor in creating the overall feel to your wedding. When choosing a location for your wedding, you have the option of having the ceremony and reception in separate locations, or they can both be held at the same location. Many churches have a hall or some other facility in which you can hold your reception. Alternatively, often you can hold your ceremony at your chosen reception site.
Look over the choices and check off all the ones that appeal to you. Have your fiance also look over the choices and check off all the ones that appeals to him. Which items have 2 checks beside them? There is space for both bride and groom to list their top 1, 2 or 3 wedding style choices.
The most important thing you need to do when you start planning your wedding is to define your vision. What do you want your wedding to look like or feel like? Do you envision a grand formal wedding? Or do you envision an informal family atmosphere full of love and laughter? Or maybe, your vision is somewhere between those two extremes. Both you and your fiancé will have your own ideas of what you always thought your wedding would be like. It is time to share that vision with each other.
Choice #1 is a reception site that includes all food and beverage services, which we will call the “all inclusive option”.
The number one thing you need to get right when planning your wedding, is getting your marriage license!
If it is your style to be informal, and you don’t want an engagement party, then it is perfectly acceptable to ‘just tell people’.But what happens if you tell one friend, and you forget to tell another friend and they hear it from someone else.It could create hurt feelings—even if you meant to tell them.So you need to make your first list—called an Engagement Notification List.It will also make things easier for you later on in the wedding planning process because it will become the basis of your guest list.
You might be thinking—“I never knew that preparing to announce our engagement was necessary.