Photography Services

Hello.
This is my first-ever Blog entry so please be patient. I will attempt to be brief and to the point and pass on my advice for saving money on your wedding services. I'm hoping to cover different topics at different times of the year and will start with my own area of expertise - Photography.

I'm a professional photographer and have been to MANY weddings over the years so I've seen some great ideas, some bad ideas and some ideas not worth mentioning... Hopefully you'll find some of the greater ideas here.

Photography
One of the most common mistakes I see is with disposable cameras. If you're going to pay a photographer, you might as well use him/her to get your candid photos and save some money. You're already paying a professional photographer so make sure he/she goes around to each table to get table shots of all guests if that's what you want. Get him/her to take candids of the guests being themselves, your decorations, etc. Tell him/her to be creative and not just shoot posed shots. There's nothing worst than paying all that money for disposable cameras (even if you get them on sale!) to have to pay for the developing, and double prints in case there's a good one and then find out you have 80 photos of someone's nostrils, breasts, feet or ceiling... I'm not totally against disposable cameras but if you ARE going to spend the money, make sure it's money well-spent by following these tips:

1) Give the cameras to RESPONSIBLE people - you can still go out and buy those cameras but perhaps you can pre-designate who will have them ahead of time to make sure they'll capture 'good' things...
2) Try to give them out to different 'types' of people - ex: give a camera to someone in the bride's family, another to someone in the groom's family, another to a good friend from school, another to a co-worker, another to a sporting colleague, etc. This way, you'll still get some GREAT shots but they won't all be of the same people and you'll have many memories of all the important people in your life from all the areas of your life.
3) Do get doubles - don't waste your money only getting 1 set of prints and then have to spend on a per-print basis afterwards. You'll spend a lot less getting doubles in the beginning (as low as $2 for 24 prints) then to have to spend 20 or 30 cents per print afterwards...
4) Consider buying inexpensive DIGITAL cameras for the above-mentioned people. You can get reasonably priced digital cameras as low as $20-$30 and then have them to keep afterward. If the shots are duds, you can just delete them afterward. As a bonus, you can take one or two of them on your honeymoon and not have to worry if they are stolen, lost or damaged by water or sand. You may spend $100 for 4 or 5 cameras but they can be used again, given to your children when/if they come along or taken to outings when you don't want to bring your 'expensive' camera. (think beach, circus, sporting events or anywhere else you may damage your camera).

Hope this advice helps! Please do leave a comment if you're reading this - I like to know if my advice has helped anyone...

Carol Grant
3D Creations