Firstly, big congratulations! It’s such a magical time of year anyway and to add a special declaration of love and the excitement of planning your dream wedding, you must be over the moon…
One of the first things we hear about or read about online from future Bride’s is – where do I start…It can seem daunting as it is a huge task! With planning aids and professional venues and suppliers who can direct you along your planning path you will find your flow in no time.
Planning aids? All of our Bride’s talk about either using a bridal planner book or a website/app or both!
Etsy has so beautiful planners books to suit your style, I got my friend one to help her plan her 2025 wedding and she loves it!
Websites/apps like Bridebook offer couples to create a profile and start to plan online with suppliers.
Both ways offer guidance from where to start, your budget, what to decide and when, lists, tracking your spending, mood boards and your visions and so on…
Your venue, once chosen will usually also offer recommendations and suggestions on your next planning steps. They may even have a preferred supplier list.
Recommended or preferred suppliers are wedding professionals that have been carefully selected by the venue itself that they will advertise not only for their service but because they know the venue to work at very well and have a great working relationship with them.
Whilst this an incredible honour to be recommended by a venue, typically photographers can be booked to shoot anywhere and will do their venue/location research (if they haven’t shot there before) and also turn up early to visualise and plan.
We are honoured to be recommended by Friern Manor which has always been one of our favourite wedding venues!
Each couple has different priorities and every wedding is different, however the date and venue/s are always number one. Once you have this booked you have a starting point to enquire to each supplier and they can check their availability.
We do receive enquiries before this point as well and can send our information and pricing but ultimately the date is key as there are only 2 photographers here at R J Photography and we are already have a lot of bookings until the end of 2026!
Once you have your venue and date the next place to start is your high demand suppliers. These are suppliers that cannot do multiple weddings each day.
High demand suppliers include – photographers, videographers, entertainment – DJ’s, singers and bands, food & drink (if not included with your venue) hair and make up artists, florists and venue stylists.
With photography being high on the demand list for booking quite quickly after the date and venue, let’s talk about how you would even choose (if you haven’t already been admiring someone that is…)
The first and most important of all is – STYLE! Is this how you want your wedding photos captured, they are your visual key to look back and feel your wedding day for years and years to come.
Our style is modern storytelling – we document the natural parts of the day and also add a touch of emotive, stylish portraits and visions. Our editing style is real – true colour and black & white.
There are many talented photographers and many styles to choose from – completely documentary all the way to fashion inspired photo shoot style vibes.
One thing we find happens, not often but it does happen – is couples contact us and say they love our style but could we do a little more of this (insert a completely different style from Pinterest) and edit the photos to be more warm or more dark and moody. The short answer to this is no, we are not the photographers for you and we will tell you this because ultimately we want you to have your dream day too!
So you found the Photographer you love, their website and social media platform portfolios are the vision of the wedding photography you want – what’s next?
Contact – availability and pricing and cross your fingers as you wait for a reply.
By this point you may already have a budget in mind which you know you can/cannot stretch for each dream supplier.
The photography (and videography) are the only investments that live on and on, through the years long after your wedding day. We do tend to find that couples are usually willing to reassign budget from other areas because of this reason alone.
At R J Photography we have 2 photographers (Rebecca & Paul) who can shoot your wedding day in exactly the same style. The idea came to Rebecca early in 2024 when she looked at just how many couples she has to turn away each year because she is already booked. After finding Paul and him successfully shooting many weddings under her name, more couples now have the chance of their wedding being shot in our desired signature style.
The same process roughly will apply to all of your wedding suppliers –
STYLE – is it what you want exactly, AVAILABILITY – can they do your date, PRICING – are they within budget / can we stretch as we love them.
Whether we are the photographers for you or you just found this article helpful to help you on your way – we are wishing you an amazing wedding planning journey and congratulations again on your recent engagement!
