Our Photographer

How We Made the Right Decision

H2b and I are keen amateur photographers. Most Saturdays you can find us wandering around snapping photos of anything, mostly flowers and ducks, not sure why. This means that we are fussy when choosing our wedding photographer. We also assigned a fairly hefty chunk of our wedding budget towards getting the right photographer for us.

After our venue and the church, our photographer was the third wedding item that we booked!

Before meeting with any photographers, I researched through the internet to look at the range of prices that photographers are charging so that I would know what sort of costs we would be looking at.

Shop Around

The first photographer we met with was Steve Ford as he was recommended by our venue. First we looked through the sample albums that were available at the venue and then quickly made an appointment. We went to his studio in Ketley in Telford, Shropshire and had a really good chat about what we wanted.

Steve talked to us about his style of photography, the cameras he uses but most importantly we looked through sample albums.

The walls of Steve’s studio were adorned with gorgeous canvas prints of fantastic wedding photos, and I love canvas prints.

Looking through the sample albums was really good as it gave us a feel of what our wedding photos could look like. We felt relaxed and comfortable talking to Steve and his prices were average for wedding photography that we knew of so we were very interested. But I still wanted to have a look at different photographers to make sure we had an experience of different photographers.

Making Our Decision

The second and last photographer we spoke to, we met at the Moat House, Acton Trussel at a wedding fayre. His photos stood out from the rest and absolutely took our breath away. They were the photos we wish we could take. The lighting was amazing, the composition was incredible, the atmosphere in the photos was breathtaking. I was absolutely smitten so h2b and I booked an appointment to meet with Clive Blair at a later date.

I asked my Dad to join us, as he would be paying for the photographer, and met up with Clive at our place. He brought his albums with us and talked us through what he would do on our day. He didn’t hard sell us or try to convince us, his photo did all the talking. Looking through the sample albums was like looking at what our wedding day could be like!

We booked Clive there and then.

But then trouble struck! I had googled the internet looking for the school Easter holidays in 2012, as this was when our wedding would be! Everywhere I’d looked, the Easter holidays started Saturday 31st March 2012, this was the date we’d told the venue, the church and Clive! Disaster! The school holidays do not in fact start on that weekend! Panic!

Luckily the church and the venue were able to change the date, but Clive wasn’t sure. We had a few tense weeks until Clive was able to confirm. Luckily he was! So everything worked out for the best.

If you would like to share any of your experiences of choosing a photographer, or if you’re a photographer and have a funny story of a booking, please feel free to leave a comment below.