How to Be An Awesome Guest at an Engagement Party*

1. Show up with smiles, mucho congratulations, and a camera.

2. Tail party guests with said camera, snapping candids, group shots, and capturing party decoration details. 

3. Print pictures, assemble into an album, and mail to the future bride and groom.

 Source

My cousin Pam did this for Mr. B and I at our engagement party, and I was so, so happy when I received the album in the mail! I am a person who photographs everything I do, but obviously there was no time to hang out behind the lens at my own party. I was bummed about not getting enough pictures, so it was awesome to realize that someone else had taken care of this for us. Plus, she included a CD of the pictures too, so we could print some out on our own as well.

My best friend, BM Kelly, is having an engagement party at the end of October, and I will definitely pull a Pam and act as party paparazzi.

What thoughtful things did people surprise you with for your engagement?

PS: Posting could be erratic this week, Hurricane Irene is set to pummel my state in a matter of hours (eek) and I have no idea what the power/Internet/other situation will look like afterward. Hope anyone in its path stays safe this weekend!!!

Sweet Relief

So today as I was flipping through the mail, I noticed a small brown envelope addressed to me from our photographer. I tore it open to reveal its contents:

Our engagement pictures!

We’d seen a sneak preview through email, but I was so excited to have real copies of all the pictures. The pictures, in case my blog post title didn’t make it obvious, really came out okay. My hair, while nowhere near perfect (and in no way similar to how I ever wear it) really looks fine in the pictures. Not amazing, not perfect, but fine. Our outfits photographed well. Our photographer came up with great poses, and really worked with the weather. The pictures aren’t what I had always envisioned (sun, surf, rides), but you know what? They came out good anyway! Maybe this is something I should keep in mind for the wedding- little things might go wrong, but the overall result will be right. 

Okay, so you probably want to see these don’t you…Click ahead!

Engagement Picture Fiasco

Every email that shows up in my inbox today is giving me a heart attack.

Don’t the coupon people at Ann Taylor know that WE ARE SUPPOSED TO GET OUR ENGAGEMENT PICTURES BACK any day now and I need them to stop faking me out?!  I feel like I’m waiting for my semester grades in Calc- half of me is terrified of the potential horror, and the other half anxiously hopes for the best.  

See, our shoot was kind of a disaster. I was really pumped about engagement pictures, looking forward to them even before I had a ring. I had visions of us frolicking on the boardwalk, cotton candy in hand, yellow rays of sun sparkling across my ring. Like these:

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I booked the April shoot in January, and took the day off of work, for maximum nail, hair, and makeup pampering. For my hair, I wanted something polished but sexy, a blowout with volume and maybe some curls at the end. Like this:

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I wanted simple, pretty makeup, not wild, but I did want my eyes to stand out:

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My blowout looked a little too curly when I left the salon, but I reasoned it would fall a bit and be perfect. Instead, it fell so much that the makeup artist asked how I was going to do my hair when I got home. Unfortunately, I had no time to fix it, because  my makeup looked porn star awful and redoing that was the bigger priority. She actually used burgundy eyeshadow, and rimmed my eyes and lips in such thick liner that I had to hide behind my sunglasses as I slunk out of Nordstrom’s. Luckily, I’ve never hated the way I do my own makeup, so I washed it off, and crafted a quick navy smoky eye at home (while panicking to Mr. B, screaming at him to get me a shot of gin, so I could calm down and not look frazzled in pics. Wisely, he refused).  

My hair was still hateful, but my makeup salvaged and our outfits awesome. Plus, Mr. B had thoughtfully arranged some props on his own, including a bright bouquet of yellow roses and his guitar. It would be ok.

Yeah, it wasn't. The weather might have been sunny in my hometown, a half hour from the shore, but it was was gray and wet once we crossed the bridge to the beach. The boardwalk was smothered by a late afternoon fog so heavy we couldn’t even see the water. A steady mist floated through the air, covering the photographer’s camera in a thin layer of moisture that he kept wiping off.  Plus it was freezing, and our teeth chattered through every posed kiss.

Vendor Search Tips: Photographer

I love planning my wedding (far more than is normal!), but I found the vendor search a little frustrating. Isolating the best people and driving all over the state to meet (and not hire) them kind of sucked, as did learning everything that needed to go in the contracts. Since our parents are covering the wedding, I felt a lot of pressure to really research and make those vendor contracts as solid as possible.  I figure I’m not the only one who struggled with this process, so this week I'll share my personal tips and research.  The posts will have two parts: one, a form of questions  I created to bring when meeting potential vendors, and two, a list of things to include in your contract.

I’ll start with the photographer, since it’s super important and probably the longest post (consider yourself warned!).

I met with a lot of different photographers, so I created a form of questions that I could just print out before meetings and fill in as we talked. This allowed for even comparisons among photographers. It's humongous, but below, for your use (if you put it up anywhere though, link back to me please!)

Photographer Info
Name
Phone Number Contact
Location & Hours
Available on date: # Weddings/day: Name of person actually shooting:	Yes          No
Photography Style:
Film or Digital: (film cost/proc incl?) Equipment used:
B&W or Color:
Assistant used:    Assistant’s Role    Work samples	Yes         No
Package:    Package options    Hours in package    Overtime rate    Will they use a shot list?    E-pics included?
Proofs:    Included or extra?    How/when do we    get proofs (format)?
Album:    Included & options    Number of photos?    Parent albums?
Prints    Average number:     CD of digital files:    Guest print ordering:
Backup plan if sick, etc
Bring extra lighting?	Yes          No
Familiar with venue?	Yes          No
Site visit:	Yes          No
Shooting Schedule or order of shots
Payment    Deposit Required:    Final Payment Due:    Cancellation Policy:
Comments: (fee escalation protection, weddings per day, copyright ownership, available discounts, what they wear, references)	www.bandtwed.blogspot.com

Engagement Pictures are Trying to Kill Me

Mr. B and I planned to take our engagement pictures on the boardwalk, but I recently discovered The Best Pictures Ever, which have me reconsidering.

These pictures so good they prompted me to send the following string of one line emails (copied from my Gmail) to Mr. B at work. Seems I type like I'm drunk when excited:

LOOK AT THIS http://www.100layercake.com/blog/archives/12687

scroll to very bottom

SIGH 

IM IN LOVE adn im in love with her outfit

brad we need boat pics. f the boardwalk everyone does the boardwalk!!

omg lets do BOHT

You might be wondering what these engagement pictures are:

Engagement Pictures- Where to Take?

Long before I was engaged or all that involved in the world of weddings, I knew I wanted to take our engagement pictures on our favorite boardwalk. It's where so many of our "firsts" have taken place- kiss, date, anniversary, etc. In the summer, we're there pretty much weekly, hitting up the bars with our friends or walking the boards, picking out our dream beach houses. There's no question its "our" place, so it seems a natural choice for the engagement pictures.

Here’s the kind of thing I had in mind:

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The A Team: Our Photographer!

The search is finally over!! We've booked Spark Photography out of Philadelphia, also known as choice 3 on my little pro and con sheet.  Spark is a husband and wife team with lots of photography experience, a great eye for detail, and many years of being a Knot pick.

So clearly, the choice was not an instinctual, one-look-and-I-just-knew type of thing. But I debated over choosing a photographer for a few weeks, and slowly the other ones started to fall away.  Spark had all the best qualities that we were looking for, from my favorite proofs, to the husband and wife team capturing two distinct perspectives, to their willingness to negotiate a great custom package for us. Plus, Kevin was easily the nicest vendor we met- I'm thinking when you get out of the NYC area, the kindness of people surprises you!

It became clear that my only worries about them were sort of illogical, who-knows type of things, and not legitimate cons. So once I realized that, I saw there were no cons about going with Spark. I’m so excited about it now- every time I look at their page I get more and more excited for our pictures! Here’s a few of my faves:

Choosing a Photographer, Part 2

I am unexpectedly agonizing over the decision of a photographer.  It seems that everyone has OMGsqueeeLOVE feelings about their photographer- people don’t  simply discuss their photographer, they get all high-pitched -million-exclamation points about it: “Omg, we used so-and-so and they were AWESOME! Seriously I am IN LOVE with them! Ahh!”  

Choosing a Photographer

Choosing our photographer has been unexpectedly difficult for us. I thought I approached the decision in a rational way, using my nifty little 4 step process:

1. Scour blogs, message boards, weddings in magazines, word of mouth suggestions, etc, to compile a master list of photograpers.
Done. And 40 lines long!

2. Visit all their websites. Their best pictures are on the front page and the banner design, so if the sites don't immediately appeal to you, cut the photographer from your list.
Done. Down to 15 people.

3. Query all of them for pricing and date availability. Obviously, you can cross off anyone out of your budget, or already booked.
Sniff. Goodbye, John Arcara and $7,000 package.

4. Make appointments to visit them, attempting to keep the appointments all within a 2 week period for efficient decision making.

So that's where it got difficult. (Step 5 would have been go to contract!) When I met with the photographers, I found that I left each meeting feeling underwhelmed and less impressed than when I had gone in. The proofs bored me, and I realized what I saw on websites was 10 awesome images, chosen from 500 mediocre ones. Some of the photographers had weird personalities- dry, sarcastic, unprofessional. One was impossible to communciate with via email- I'd reply immediately to her emails, then not hear back for two days. We went back and forth saying the same things, to the point that I wondered if I was speaking another language without realizing it.  I almost blew off our meeting, but decided to go, as I had nothing better to do. My dad came with me to lend his opinion, since Mr. B was working.

Big mistake. I was blown away by her photography. It felt like she brought a sense of artistic talent, as opposed to just capturing random snapshots. Her pictures seemed to capture beautiful lighting, and were noticeably well composed, even to an amateur like me. Though we had a strange moment in our meeting where she quizzed us on the prices other photographers quoted us (we declined to divulge the information, saying we felt a little weird) she was overall super sweet. I told her we were really interested, and that I just had to run things by my fiance and I'd be in touch.

 Some of her images (Source)

When I got home from our meeting, I realized I definitely didn't want to wait any longer to think on the decision. I knew Mr. B would agree on her, so I logged into my email, ready to ask for a contract.

Only she emailed had emailed me first, a mere 15 minutes after our meeting ended. The note simply read, "I'm so sorry, but I am no longer available for your date. I wish you luck on your search."

I was FURIOUS. Clearly, that strange moment had impacted her a lot- she had said in the meeting there were no other inquiries on my date, so how could she "suddenly" be booked? I should have listened to my gut, which gave me doubts about her just from our Gmail conversations. I was very confused, as she has nothing but good reviews online. And I'm so angry- I'd finally found a photographer I liked, only to have her wind up being an unprofessional and kind of nutty. My fiance even tested her out, using a different venue but our same wedding date, and lo and behold, she was available. And, by the way, significantly nicer in her emails to him.

So back to the drawing board, I guess.