Real Wedding Planning...

Real Wedding Planning… a brief but vital guide to getting started

There are 3 essentials you need to decide in order to begin planning and organising your perfect wedding day:

The budget

The wedding date

The guest list

Once these are sorted, the wedding planning can commence. These 3 essential details all play off each other to start your plans: Without the budget you can’t chose your venue, dress, accessories and so forth; Without the date you can’t plan the venue; Without the guest list you don’t know how big your venue needs to be, how many people you have to cater for or how far you have to stretch your budget!  So get these three organised and your on your way to becoming Mr & Mrs!

The wedding budget can be managed in a number of ways, with savings, cash gifts from generous parents and relatives and salary/ wages in the lead up to your wedding day.  Don’t forget you rarely have to pay for everything all at once or as soon as you decide to get married, you do have time to drip feed the expense of your wedding, but it’s essential to plan…

Here’s a helpful budget-planning checklist to get your exciting wedding plans underway:

Registrar/ church fees

Wedding rings

Bride’s dress

Bride’s accessories

i)     veil

ii)    jewellery

iii)   shoes

iv)   lingerie

Hair & Make-up

Groom’s outfit

Groom’s shoes

Best man/ ushers outfits

Bridesmaid dresses

Wedding photographer

Wedding cars

Stationary

Flowers

Cake

Reception venue hire

Table decorations

Table favours

Chair covers

Catering

Drinks/ bar

Band and DJ

Thank you gifts

Honeymoon

Handy tips:

1) When I was planning my wedding I found that I became dependant on lists, they were indispensable.  It was really helpful having lists from favourite venues and prices, the best wedding dress shops in the area, weekly checklists of things to be sourced and paid for and in season flowers.  As you work on each section of your wedding plan, having the lists to refer back to is invaluable and saves time revisiting (and trying remember) previous ideas.

2) Unless you have a clear idea of theme, or favourite flowers or era it seems it’s a case of going through all available magazines, blogs, wedding fairs and websites for ideas.  This can be not only confusing but also overwhelming! 

I created a digital mood board by copying my favourite photographs, themes and colours from all of the websites I was traipsing through. It didn’t take long for a colour theme and style to emerge through the images of weddings, dresses, table decorations and flowers.

3) There are many resources available for advice and up to date themes.

Just for starters have a look at:

Top wedding bloggers:

http://www.rockmywedding.co.uk/

http://london-bride.com/

www.philippacraddock.com/blog

Top wedding magazine websites:

www.the-weddingplanner.com

www.weddinglink.co.uk/bride

www.theweddingdirectory.co.uk

www.weddingmagazine.co.uk

Top stores to grab a wedding bargain:

www.notonthehighstreet.com

www.etsy.com

http://www.weddingarcade.com/

The true value of wedding photography...

--> As an established photographer making the decision to concentrate on Wedding Photography full time is a brave move, opening oneself up to the minefield of the wedding business.  There are hundreds of established wedding photographers all vying for the attention of the happy bride and groom who’ve seen the perfect wedding photographs in glossy magazines and highlighted in top portrait photographers portfolios…  

But what is real?  According to stats given by Which Magazine 2011, the average wedding cost is around £20,000, so unsurprisingly the happy couple are constantly trying to make savings where-ever possible.  

The bride imagines those dreamy, stylish images of her perfect day, taken by a confident and professional photographer and as a confident and professional photographer I can deliver this dream.  However, it comes at a price, the price of my hourly fee for all of the additional work undertaken after the 5 to 9-hour wedding shoot. 

Photography falls under the “service” category, and yes you may get digital files, prints or an album at the end of the process, but it’s still a service.  The outlay for a wedding photographer, on average between £2,000 and £4,000, may seem a bit hard to swallow, but it still amazes me when clients balk at that expense and yet barley flinch when a venue charges more than double that price.  Why does the venue seem so much better value?  Is it because it’s more tangible? You can see the building, touch the walls and feel the luxurious parquet flooring underfoot…  Why does my photography service and expertise seem less value?

Just to run through some costs that not every bride and groom appreciates, to explain what you get when you hire my services as a wedding photographer:  

My photography experience, education and training.

My professional standard equipment costs; camera, lighting, editing software, printer etc.

My professional insurance and other business costs.

The average 5-hour wedding takes 20 hours to edit.

The average 9-hour wedding takes 35 hours to edit.

To produce a wedding album takes a further 5 to 20 hours.

Not to mention venue visits and first edit show cases.

So to be honest I think to have lifetime keep sakes from the happiest and most important day of your life, the £2k - £4k price tag is more than worth it… The wedding dress you only wear once, the wedding venue you only use once, the flowers you use only once, the pictures are there to remind you for a lifetime. Would you want someone untrained to capture your day with a camera from Argos, even if your favourite Uncle says he can.....! What do you think?

This is my story of the 96% beauty blindness...

There is this Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign doing the rounds on the Internet at the moment, which claims that only 4% of women consider themselves to be beautiful.  I was so shocked by these figures, as it leaves an astounding 96% of women deeming themselves unattractive.  I always thought all women around me to be beautiful; that is all except me...

And then, a few days later, I was tasked with taking pictures of my sons teachers to display on a board. I started this project after walking every day past the board and noticing the ugly, badly lit mug-shots of the staff taken with a camcorder... I was terrified that someone who was spending so much time with my son would have such low self esteem after walking past and seeing their terrible portrait so many times a day!

It was quick photo session for the staff. There was the standard conversation of, "I don’t like having my picture taken," and variations of the, "I hate pictures of me," dialogue, with the girls that cheer me every day with their huge generous smiles at the reception, soon joining in.  Every day as I approach the nursery building I know I need to start smiling, because there will always be huge welcoming smiles waiting for me and I cannot ruin this by arriving with a “flustered mother” face...

I practically begged the girls to give me try and prove that they are so so wrong... These pictures were taken without any special preparation, dressing up or professional make-up. They are exactly as I see them every day... And later that evening when my husband entered the office as the pictures were uploading to my computer, his reaction was "wow, is she a model!? Where did you meet her?"... If you only knew how she felt about herself... 

What are we doing to ourselves girls?!

Which team are you on… the 96% or the 4%?

Honestly it's been the most emotionally difficult photo editing ever. A complete roller-coaster between anger, sadness and tears... But also happiness; happiness that I have a gift to see people as beautiful as they truly are...

Oh, I only realised that I had this gift thanks to Elina, who wrote about her wedding experience with me. She wrote about me: "She loves people, she is super positive and gets on amazingly well with everyone. She finds beauty in people and she is a people photographer." Yes, I really see everyone as beautiful. Honestly! But when it comes to myself, it's the same old hypocritical story.

I got a birthday gift from my best friend from school, with the words - "When I saw this necklace I thought it was SO YOU!" My first reaction was - No. It's beautiful but it's not me. It cannot be true that even though she knows everything about me, including all my skeletons hidden in the wardrobe, and yet she still finds me as bold and beautiful as this necklace...

When you need to understand something, the universe conspires to help you achieve this understanding?!

Can we be the universe for each other and change how we feel about ourselves, ladies?! Or will we always find our critical voice louder than the universal one around us?!

All Hail Irregular Choice...

So I get married... I spend a fortune on a beautiful bespoke silk dress... I have my hair done by a professional and sport diamonds worth thousands... and what are the comments I receive all day and evening....?

"WOW, I absolutely love your shoes..."

My beautiful Irregular Choice Itsy Bitsy Betsy shoes, were the eBay bargain of the century... at only £30!

Having chosen a 1950's inspired wedding dress and not wanting to look like a conveyor belt bride, I wanted some really stand out shoes to fit the idea...  Irregular Choice were the only option and the Itsy Bitsy Betsy style could not have worked better...

I chose the flowers for my bouquet, designed by Kopend Creations, to compliment the red and pink flowers in the irregular choice shoes...  I couldn't have been more happy with the end result...

I really struggle with high heeled shoes due to a knee injury and was very wary that I wanted something comfortable and glamorous for my wedding day...  These irregular choice shoes really fitted the bill, with their platform heel, soft material and adjustable heel strap, I wore them for 9 hours and I was stood up chatting, dancing and skipping for pretty much the whole time!

Thank you Irregular Choice for being so Irregular!!!

 

The case against "Good Enough" by Kathleen Trenske...

I found this article by Kathleen Trenske, writing for The Huffington Post

... a very succinct view on the pros of a wedding album...

My parents have exactly 18 professional images from their wedding. Eighteen. I know them inside and out. I could describe each image to you so well that a sketch artist would be able to recreate them.

How do I know them so well? Because I've looked at them hundreds of times. I've looked at them hundreds of times because they were on display, in an album. An album that was made by a professional, filled with prints made through a professional lab and bound in a book available only to professionals. From the time I was a little girl I was fascinated by it -- seeing my parents so young, my grandparents and aunts and uncles surrounding them. It was a simple leather book, with the images slipped in and preserved behind plastic but it held up surprisingly well over time. Even though I looked at it more times than I could count. Even though this May those images will turn 42 years old.

But what about couples that marry today? What if they decide to forgo an album? What if they decide it's not worth the cost? How many images do you really think they'll put into frames? Five? Ten? Maybe that first year married, they'll have a bunch. But then, kids comes along. Baby pictures replace wedding pictures in those frames. They move, things change. In 40 years, how many pictures do you think their children will know by heart? How many pictures will they have even seen?

Today, a lot of couples think just getting the disc of images is "good enough." Here's the problem with that thinking: it's not true. Not by a long shot.

Don't get me wrong, I think that getting the files from your day is great. Today's couples probably get up to 1,000 images from their wedding, WAY more images than my parents did. After all, what happened to all those other images from my parents' wedding day? They probably sat, negatives in a box, at their photographer's studio never again to see the light of day. So I think it's wonderful that couples get ALL their photos. But what worries me is that even with that option, it won't mean that today's couples will necessarily be better off. My fear is that today's couples will actually end up with LESS than what my parent's got in 1971.

Think about it, will the computers of 2055 even have DVD drives? USB ports? Will they even have hard drives at all? If the past is any indication, the answer is no. You know what the big technological advancement was when my parents got married? Eight-track players. What if their images were stored on the equivalent of that? How in the world would I see those images today?
But you know what never becomes obsolete? What never goes out of style? Photographs. And not just any photographs. Not photos printed at a drugstore. Professional photographs, printed by a professional lab. Those are the photos you find in an attic. It could be a 100-year-old photo, but it still looks good. Because back then, the paper photographs were printed on was high quality and developing them was an art form. There were no machines that spit out pictures onto cheap paper with inexpensive ink. I actually have to stop myself from intervening when I see people at those automated machines in a drugstore. Whatever they're charging, it's too much. Because those prints aren't worth the paper they're printed on. They will fade. They will curl. They will not stand the test of time. Not even close.

Your memories are worth more than that. And your wedding images? They are worth TONS more than that. These aren't snapshots from a vacation. They aren't pictures from your iPhone. You cared enough about these moments to hire a professional to photograph them. Follow that through by having a professional print them. Have that professional print the pictures you put into frames and have them design you a high-quality wedding album that you will cherish for decades.
If you purchase an album through your photographer, you can see a sample in person. You can touch and feel it and make sure it is worth every penny.

I know that albums are expensive. That's for good reason. They are custom-designed books, usually hand-stitched and hand assembled and made just for you.
But of all the things you spend money on for your wedding, your wedding photographs are the ONLY thing that will increase in value over time. As the years pass, you'll be more and more glad that you have them. Especially, if you can experience looking through them by flipping through a gorgeous custom-designed album instead of sitting in front of your computer and clicking "next" with your mouse.

So, figure out a way to make it happen. Figure out a way to afford that album. Forgo a centerpiece. Cut back on your guest list. Opt out of the vintage car you'll drive in for all of 20 minutes.
Don't just do it for you. Do it for your children. Do it for your grandchildren. Because when they root around in your attic in 2075, they will have no idea what do with a USB key anymore than they would with a laser disc player.

TFGP Finally Launched...

 

HURRAH!!! 

We’ve finally launched The Fairy Godmother Project Wedding Photography with a wedding at Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire, followed by a reception at The Hare & Hounds Hotel, just down the road from Westonbirt Arboretum…

What a beautiful and spectacular day it was too…

The bride arrived in a 1960’s Dodge Charger hired from Star Car Hire, and proceeded to get blown into the ceremony by the biting wind...  

With a stunning bouquet created by Kopend Creations, and a dress made by Alice from Veils of Berkeley the smile from the brides face could been see for miles!

 

The rain kindly held off for the ceremony and until the newly married bride and groom and the guests were safely ensconced in The Hare & Hounds, with a glass of champagne and a canape in hand!

Welcome to TFGP...

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER PROJECT WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY

Welcome to the Fairy Godmother Project, officially launching March 2013...

The Fairy Godmother Project are two creative and talented wedding photographers... our aim is to give you confidence and creativity on your big day.

Zane Karklina and Nikki Little are The Fairy Godmother Project, casting a protective wand over your perfect day. We are here to create timeless memories with an elegant, fun and trustworthy approach.       

Qualified with Masters Degrees in Fine Art Photography, we have been photographing stylish weddings, events and portraits for over 5 years. With an eye for detail and a fun and friendly manner, we will capture your special occasion with style and finesse, presenting the chosen images in a bespoke album.

You will have the attention of two qualified and creative photographers attending your big day, capturing as many moments as possible, from all angles throughout the day.

We will create a record of your wedding with our ability to stylishly capture the moment, leaving you the time and freedom to fully enjoy your wedding day and guests.  After the big day we will work with you to present your images in a manner that befits your characters and personalities.

You can feel confident under the protective guidance of The Fairy Godmother Project.