Wedding Splurge: Photography!

I am all smiles over my photography deal! :)

This post is a bit behind the times, but I am so excited to announce that we have found our wedding photographer. For those of you who know me personally, you know that picking a photographer has not been an easy decision or process. Many of you have probably gathered from previous posts that Johnny and I have been planning our wedding on a budget with the aim of creating a beautiful wedding without procuring a hefty debt in the process.

Establishing a budget is often the first step when planning a wedding. It helps couples to set limits and to allocate funds into categories that are high priorities for them, to help them focus on the areas they want to splurge on or simply cut completely altogether. For some brides, they want to focus on a gorgeous dress, the perfect venue, or spend the majority of the budget on the food. For me, the area I was most willing to splurge a little extra money toward was our wedding photography. Besides our own personal memories on our wedding day, pictures are the best way to preserve those little moments for the future years. However, it's important not to take the idea of splurging too far either or to spend a disproportionate amount on something. In order to keep from doing this, we placed the payment of said photographer to come out of the funds I contributed to our budget. This would guarantee that I ended up with what I wanted and that I'd be careful in my selection. You are far more discerning when it's your own money paying for something! Believe me, the search for our photographer has proven that!

Once we established who would pay for our wedding photography, my next step was to examine the expectations I had for our wedding photographer. Of course, I had very high expectations. I wanted a professional photographer, someone who did photography as their livelihood and not simply on the side. I wanted someone who did this type of work a lot and had lots of experience, who wouldn't be experimenting with ideas or trying out new functions on their camera at my expense. In other words, I didn't want a point and shoot amateur who just got adobe photo shop on their computer. I wanted someone with talent and a good eye, who could produce beautiful pictures and knew how to enhance them in the post production phase. I also wanted all these things at an affordable price...which I didn't think was too much to ask for.

That being said, until I searched Google, I wasn't aware there were so many photographers in the Chattanooga area that specialized in wedding photography. There were still more to choose from on Facebook and in the bridal magazines. I was immediately overwhelmed. I also realized it would be difficult to eliminate photographers based on posted prices, since a high majority of websites excluded pricing altogether, requesting instead my email address or phone number before it would be sent. I found this to be rather irksome, especially when I didn't receive timely responses back from my inquiries. I'm sure it's a clever method of collecting your email address and phone number for future advertising. and demographics. Whatever the reason, it appeared to be a common practice among photographers online. It was refreshing when I ran across websites with published prices, because although I was willing to splurge on photography, I still wanted to keep the expense less than $2000 dollars, preferably much less. I wanted to stay within a reasonable budget without sacrificing talent for the sake of it.

Ultimately, it took about four weeks of diligent searching and patiently sifting through online portfolios before I contracted our wedding photographer. There were several portfolios that caught my eye including: Daisy Moffatt, Our Ampersand, and in particular Innamorata, whom I was strongly considering. During our tasting in March, I noticed one of their wedding albums on display and simply fell in love with their photography style. I also came to find out they were very intimately acquainted with Grandview as a venue, because they shot weddings up there frequently. Unfortunately, their quoted price fell outside of my comfort zone and left no room for anything extra like a casual engagement session, which I knew Johnny placed a higher value upon. We both agreed that causal engagement pictures would likely be more displayable if given as a gift.

I had just about resigned myself to the fact that I would be going with Innamorata and giving up on engagement pictures when I ran across a website called BrideRush. It's a site similar to Groupon and Livingsocial, which provides its consumers, who are Brides in a Rush with discounts on wedding services. There were all types of services available on the site, from floral shops to DJ's to makeup artists, but there was only one photographer listed for the Chattanooga Area, Sergio Plecas Photography. He offered a deal that provided one photographer for 12 hours for just $1000, which originally had been $2000. Well, immediately I looked over his wedding galleries and posted engagement sessions and was impressed and excited that they were quite good! I especially liked his engagement sessions, because his photography style had captured candid moments shared by the couples. I felt assured that he'd do a great job capturing the essence of Johnny and me as a couple!

I was immediately interested in the deal, but there was only one problem....the deal on BrideRush wasn't exactly to my choosing, (I only had Grandview for 8 hours,) so I emailed Sergio about modifying the deal a bit so that it included a second photographer and an engagement session. Sergio quickly responded and was agreeable with modifying the deal for a little extra. Sergio will also spend a couple weeks after our wedding in post-production with the pictures to touch up color and enhance the pictures. He then provides me with a print release which allows me to share them on Facebook and blogger and print as many as I want. A print release is very important if you want to freedom to be able to print your wedding pictures yourself. Without a print release, you have to go through the photographer to have prints made. This can often be very expensive.

So although this post is a little late, I still wanted to share this post with all the people who knew of my painstaking search. Now on to more fun projects like compiling photos and inspiration for our wedding photography! I can't wait to start working with Sergio on this very subject! I've compiled several pictures from Pinterest that I want to modify for our wedding! I'll close with one of the shots that I have in mind!

Image via Denise Bailey on Pinterest

 

This is a shot I took of Grandview's patio. I'd love
to do something similar to the picture on Pinterest!
Can't you image it?