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At the end of each wedding season we like to write a little bit about our thoughts on the year. This year was full of exciting and unique weddings and we expect 2015 to be no different. We get a LOT of similar questions emailed to us on a regular basis so we thought this would be a good place to answer some of those.
Q: What are your thoughts on Pinterest?
A: I think in prior blog posts I’ve made myself pretty clear about Pinterest but I’ll share with you a summary. I like Pinterest for INSPIRATION only. I don’t like to be a copy cat and no professional certainly likes to completely copy someone else’s work. Pinterest has given some GREAT ideas to brides and in my opinion has positively allowed brides to learn more about the wedding planning process. It opens their eyes to the wide variety of options out there, educates them on different types of vendors, and has inspired some amazing weddings. The downside, it can also create a fantasy wedding in the mind of a bride that she may never achieve. We all want to look like the catalog shoots that are featured on Pinterest but we have to face some realities about ourselves, our bridal party, our budget, our venue location, and the theme we have chosen. We have seen brides struggle between two different themes and try to include both in the wedding and overdo it on all of the Pinterest photos pinned in over a years time. We also can legitimately blame Pinterest for causing delays in weddings, lateness, and in some cases over all meltdowns. Think of Pinterest as booze, consume in moderation………
Q: Funniest wedding story of 2014?
A: I got this question a lot from family/friends this holiday season. I think when people ask this they are wanting us to divulge any bridezillas or crazy momzilla behavior that might make them feel a little better about the chaos in their lives but normally we share stories about the goofballs shooting the weddings (us). Now trust me, we don’t lack on entertaining stories about all of the above but we do have a great one to share. The BEST one that I have from the year actually comes from the LAST wedding we had of the year (The wedding of Jaclyn and Anthony). What the couple and many people don’t know is that during the wedding I had a little malfunction. I’ll post my disclaimer that it did NOT impact coverage in anyway but it just made life really interesting for me for about 6 minutes. My least favorite part about a wedding is when the bridal party and bride come down the aisle. It’s the moment in the wedding where there can be no mess-ups or mistakes. Its during this time I’m usually kneeling or squatting at the front of church trying to stay as much out of the way as possible shooting as individuals walk down the aisle (or run, in some cases). I’ve had my calves lock up or legs fall asleep during long processionals to the point that I’m always praying I don’t trip and fall when I back up out of the way after the bride has come down the aisle. This particular wedding I had a completely different problem. My left contact got stuck in my Nikon viewfinder as the first couple started walking down the aisle. Without contacts, I’m blind as a bat (seriously). I still had my right one in but if you’re a professional photographer you know you would probably be better off using your normal eye then training your body in a split second to use the right. It really is an issue with grip and stability. I managed to take the contact OUT of the viewfinder (thanks long eye lashes for this) and I had no choice but to just lay it on the top of my camera. I held steady and shot away knowing that the blobs walking down the aisle were actually people. I did this until the bride got all the way down the aisle and the prayers had started before I was able to go to the back of church and pop the contact back in. Wasn’t the most sanitary of situations but it was the only option I had. After the wedding I was able to clean it with eye drops and go about my day. When I went to edit the photos I realized that despite my lack of contact, I hadn’t missed a beat with clarity and coverage of that 6 minute period. That to me was a major victory. We have had some other hilarious moments but that by far was my biggest “adjustment” triumph.
Q: What were the major themes you saw this year?
A: Vintage, vintage, and vintage. We saw a lot of lace, burlap and mason jars. We love this theme and think its very classic (especially the vintage inspired wedding dresses). We also saw several weddings that were a nice balance between vintage and modern. Some of the unique features we saw this year were popcorn bars, trail mix snack bars, cookie bars, dessert bars, a cookie made wedding cake, a nacho bar, and naked wedding cakes (google it, its seriously awesome).
Q: Biggest Bridal Party
A: 24 (10 bridesmaids, 10 groomsmen, 4 ushers). Want our opinion? DON’T DO IT, LOL. We insist the smaller the better, we have lots of examples to prove our theory.
Q: Greatest distance traveled for a wedding
A. Phoeniz, AZ ( The JW Marriot Golf Resort). Killer time. Amazing weather.
Q: Do you ever get burnt out?
A: Yes and no. Yes with editing, no with shooting weddings. I usually hit the editing burnout about December. Thankfully by then most of my weddings are complete and delivered and I’m just working on personal projects and such. I go through and sort over 100,000 photos a year, it can get monotonous.
Q: Are you planning on a change of heart on taking baby photos? What if we were wedding clients?
A: We have a current joke going around about pregnancy and weddings. A very LARGE amount of our couples that we shot weddings for this year and last are pregnant and we think that’s awesome. We still, despite our love for our couples, are not accepting infant photography bookings. We have some awesome referrals we can send you to, we just don’t have time in our schedule to offer that service.
Q: Do you have favorite dresses, shoes, rings that you run into?
A: Actually I do, that sounds like a good blog post……
Since we get some of those questions a lot we thought it would be nice just to share them for all. We are looking forward to a few events coming up specifically the Keller Convention Center Bridal Expo which will be on January 11th. We will have a booth there, stop by and see us.
2014 was really an awesome year and we have to give thanks to a few people:
Josh-Who assisted us with videography with Key-Films. Josh is extremely talented and we commonly find ourselves watching some of the footage he captured going “damnnn…….” He has a great knowledge of angles and being in the right place at the right time. He’s also very forgiving when I get into my wedding crazy modes.
Adam-Who also assisted us with videography with Key-Films. Adam finds unique angles and has a knack for capturing footage in situations where we have little to no time. He’s also great at outdoor portraits and is always willing to help with extra stuff. We know both Josh and Adam are busy people and we appreciate their help throughout the year.
Kayla-Kayla joined up with our team later in the year and she was an extremely valuable asset. She runs her own photography Studio in Martinsville (Kayla Elizabeth Photography) and is extremely talented. The first set of wedding photos of hers that I viewed from a wedding she assisted us with I was blown away. She gets real emotion and sometimes better angles than myself. She helped us out a lot in the last few weddings and we were so glad we met her.
Parents-While we are out shooting weddings we have a valuable team at home helping us with our fur baby, Charlie Key. Leaving every weekend is hard on us because we miss him a lot but my parents take excellent care of him when we are away. We couldn’t manage the wedding season without them.
Vendors: We have worked with amazing vendors this year including but not limited to: Keller Convention Center, Carriage House, Walnut Street Weddings, The Austin Mansion, Effingham and Teuotopolis KC Halls, Fully N Volved DJ Service, Complete Weddings, Gaddis Graphics, Steffen Harris Photography, Tanya at Design Pro and many more! We are happy to have such a great working relationship with many area vendors.
We plan to continue to share wedding resources as the winter months continue to bring us opportunity to do so. We will be blogging about upcoming trends, schedule suggestions, and how to print and display your wedding pictures. Stay tuned, thanks for another great year.
-Kate
