An often irreverent look at weddings from an industry insider
Maybe I’m just cold this morning…
There is something wonderful about white fur and wedding gowns. If you are planning a winter wedding why not add a bit of “snugglie” to your day. Can’t you just picture a snowy night, warm sparkling candle light and a warm white fur stole draped effortlessly around you shoulders?
Fabulous Fur Wedding Looks
When I think of this color combination it always speaks to me of a clean and elegant look. I love how some of these images also lean more towards the country casual style. Either way, the look is fresh and cheery, and never muddy.
black-yellow wedding collage
Kathy is the first in my run of guest bloggers. I thought you might like to hear the musings of some of my wedding industry friends.
It seems that every bride wants that photojournalistic look for her wedding day images. Who wouldn’t, they tell the story so eloquently & evoke so much more emotion than “camera aware” images. One thing I do to try to help my brides accomplish that is to send them these “last minute pointers”, since most aren’t models.
Photojournalistic shot of Smiling Bride
Avoid looking directly at the camera whenever you feel it on you. If we want some of you looking into the camera we will ask for that too. Be playful & show lots of emotion & these pictures will sing. You may feel silly but that will just make you laugh & those pictures will be great too.
EXPRESSION IS EVERYTHING IN PICTURES!! Laugh, cry, look into each others eyes & touch each other to show your connections to the people you love. Especially during those candid times where you may be walking with family, or your wedding party, or putting on your dress – look happy even if you may be more nervous than you ever dreamed possible.
When you come down the aisle, coming & going, look at your family & friends or each other, not your photographer! During your ceremony, look at each other with that love or nervous laughter you feel. When you make your entrance into your reception, show your joy by holding your arms up together in celebration or look at your friends or each other.
Bottom line…….have fun & celebrate your love!!!!
Beautiful Bride in Quiet Moment
Kathy Ziegler has been a successful wedding photographer for 12 happy years in San Diego. She recently moved East to enjoy the beauty of Mt Juliet Tennessee with her loveable husband of 19 years & her 2 dogs & 2 horses. Her work is fresh, fun, classy & timeless.
She is also pretty darn modest, she didn’t even mention that little “Best of The Knot” badge on her website when she sent her bio. Gotta love her! You can find out more about Kathy and view her portfolio on her website.
Captured Emotion at a Wedding Toast
If you haven’t been keeping up
The Agency @ Think
I have been wicked busy at the Agency @ Think. For all my industry insider readers I wanted to give you a heads up on our new look. I am especially excited about the profiles section. We have had so many success stories that I had to share.
Sometimes I get tired of seeing the same old set-up for escort cards: lovely cards surrounding elaborate floral centerpiece. Why not do something a little different with either the display or the ‘card’ itself.
The first three are cards but displayed in an interesting way.
The next three are unique items used as escort cards and the last three are full on favors. I just think that idea is wicked cool.
All of them are very DIYable. OK, so maybe not that last one is a little trickier than the rest. I promise you it is doable, I did about 100 for a bride once. They were time consuming and tedious, but doable none the less.
You see it everywhere, the average wedding in America is $28,000. Well do you know where that number came from? I do, and it’s wrong!
There are 2 entities perpetuating this myth, The Wedding Report and The Knot.com.
Here is the problem with that number. They took the total spent on weddings in America and divided it by the number of wedding. What happens is you get one or two million dollar wedding and it skews the whole number. Kind of like the old joke about Bill Gates walking into the homeless shelter and suddenly the average net worth of everyone there is over a million bucks. It just isn’t true.
I have dissected these numbers to death on Think Like A Bride and I don’t know why I never shared it with you. Here is the truth, 82% of the weddings in America fall below that $28,000 benchmark. 82%! How is that for skewing a number?
The truth is that the Average Wedding in America falls more realistically at $14,000 and below. They powers that be in the wedding industry want you to believe the higher number so you will spend more.
If you have ever read the sidebar then you know I am not a big proponent of bigger is better when it come to weddings. It’s time to end this myth.
Here are a couple of blogs to get you started on the road to not breaking the bank.
If you want to see pictures of what other brides are really doing as opposed to what bridal magazine and website editors think you should be doing there is no better place to look than the websites of real wedding photographers. Well kiddies, I just found a bonanza!
WedFog is a directory of wedding photographers designed as a resource for brides. I know, big deal, right? What makes this one Dish worthy is the searchable gallery.
Wedding photographers from all over the US and Canada upload their images in hopes of getting you to hire them for your wedding. So what you end up with are tons of beautiful images of real weddings. Then WedFog went the next step and made the whole thing into a searchable database. Cool. Looking for pink, summer bouquets? Bingo. Looking for red shoes? Bingo, I found over 50 by doing a search. What fun.
I warn you, this is one of those sites where you could get lost for hour, days, weeks. Have fun and send me links to your favorites in the comments. I would love to see what everyone is loving.
Back you beast!
How about a little bridal humor today? I was traipsing around the internet today and ran across an entire
page of simple hilarious wedding lore on of all places Snopes.com.
One of my particular favorites is about the bride that gave her baker the wrong bible verse for her wedding cake. Rather that extolling the virtues of love it made some crack about her five husbands!
Then of course there is a page that explains where all the superstitions we hold near and dear actually came from. Did you know that brides wear veils to hide their “shattering loveliness?”
They (veils) were originally worn to conceal the beauty of the bride from both easily-tempted evil spirits and “friends” of the groom who might otherwise be moved to make off with her. It was felt that that a bride’s shatteringly loveliness put her at immediate risk of abduction.
Now aren’t you happy to know that the mere act of being a bride bestows upon you
“shattering loveliness”
Keep laughing. Especially as you walk down the aisle with that gold coin in your shoe rubbing your foot!
