Between helping couples capture their big day for the past couple of years and planning my own wedding in May of 2018, there are a few things that I have learned and figure may be helpful for those newly engaged couples!
- KNOW WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU!
I cannot say this enough, as it is super important to know what you rvalue about your wedding day as it is hard to think of some couples that do not look fondly back at their wedding as they wish they had (or had not) invited certain people, or organized the day differently. For Mia and I, Family was a big factor, the photography of the day and adding some personal significance to the day was important to us.
- Family: They have been there through all of the hard times and we obviously wanted to celebrate such an important day with each and every one of them. For this reason, we decided fairly quickly that a destination wedding was off the table as we had some concerns over if certain family members would be able to join us, and we did not want a situation where they couldn’t come for either financial or health reasons.
- Photography: I am sure that none of you are shocked about my ranking of photography. I love capturing my couples’ big day and I obviously wanted the same experience, which was exactly what we received by hiring Tyler Slaney Photography to capture our day! Tyler is an amazing photographer, but whats more than that, he is someone we instantly clicked with, which is so important for both the photographer and the couple.
- Personal significance: This is a huge day for our relationship and we wanted to sprinkle our personalities on the day, thus I wore a bright corral bowtie as anyone will tell you that whenever I get dressed up, the bowties come out! For Mia, she was able to incorporate her favourite flowers into the bouquet and centre pieces. At the same time, we got married in the church Mia grew up attending and held our reception at the place where we shared our first kiss.
2. VIDEOGRAPHY CAPTURES SOMETHING THAT PHOTOS CAN’T
While budgeting for our wedding we decided to invest more in photography than invest anything into videography and we were totally ok with this idea because I love photos and they help preserve so many moments!
Fast Forward to the day before the wedding, I had just posted posted a picture on my instagram feed about my wedding coming up when a videography friend of mine who I had worked with a number of times over the past year messaged to congratulate me as he had not realized I was getting married. We continued to talk and the subject of who was capturing my wedding from a videography standpoint came up and I mentioned we were not having anyone capture it – which he was extremely alarmed with and immediately insisted that he would cover the day at no cost.
After the wedding, when Thomas delivered the video, we were so happy with the product he returned as it captured the day in such a different way from the photos
3. FLOWERS MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE
Ok, yes I have messed up and thus come home with flowers to apologize for my obvious blunder, but in other than that I did not place any importance on flowers before I started to capturing weddings and then even more after I saw their importance in my own wedding.
In terms of photography, I find that real flowers photograph better due to their natural look, and colours, but the reason I wanted to talk about this is because on our wedding day, I truly saw a bit of our personalities in the flowers and this made the day feel a little more like our own. Mia chose her favourite flowers, as well as a few that were in season. Together these flower were super colourful and bright which totally reminds me of our personalities, our fashion choices and us as a whole, was was really awesome and makes the photos mean so much more when we remember back on the day.
In terms of budget, I totally get it flowers are DAMN expensive and I totally get it if you do not want to fork out the cash to spend on something that will wither after you big day, but with this in mind, I would strongly recommend getting the Bridal party’s bouquets or at least the bride’s as real flowers because once the day is over, you can dry the bouquet out and store it in a nice shadowbox in your home to act as a physical reminder of your special day! And this is exactly what we have done, with Mia’s bouquet sitting in a shadow box above our bed in our his and hers shadow boxes, constantly reminding of us the beginning of our journey together.
