As you start the journey of planning your dream wedding day, one thing you’ll quickly learn is just how many vendors are involved in the entire process. Shortly after getting engaged, one of the first tasks you’ll complete is selecting the venue, but after that, there are plenty of decisions to follow. Depending on how long you’ve been reading our wedding blog, you may or may not know that a common theme here revolves around creating a seamless wedding planning experience. This should be such a memorable experience for you and your partner, and the last thing you need on your plate is stress!
With that in mind, today we’ll provide some assistance as you select one of the wedding vendors who is certainly an integral part of your big day and that is your photographer! They’ll be the ones responsible for capturing all of those special moments and crafting them together into the most amazing wedding photo album. Over the years, we’ve been lucky enough to work with so many talented photographers across the Houston and Conroe area, and it’s truly been a blessing to witness their work first-hand. On this week’s blog, we’ll discuss what you’ll want to look for when selecting your photographer to ensure you get one perfect for your celebration.
Ready to talk about wedding photography?
The photo on this thumbnail is courtesy of Mustard Seed Photography.
Ask your venue
We briefly hinted at this in the opening paragraph, but one of the first decisions you’ll make after your engagement is selecting a venue. Unsurprisingly, this will help simplify so many other future choices, including whether or not certain vendors are available on your date. Nonetheless, your wedding venue coordinator is also going to be an excellent resource in planning your big day. If they’ve been in the industry for a little while, they’ll likely know many of the local photographers and can help steer you in the right direction. This can almost certainly save you some time researching potential options and essentially help narrow down your list. Long story short, if you ever need some guidance during the planning stages, your coordinator at the venue is a terrific place to start.
As a wedding venue, we can attest to this point. When couples book their wedding with Madera Estates, they’re provided access to our client portal. This contains a number of different resources, including recommended vendors.
Covering the basics
No matter which photographer or photography company you’re considering, there are a handful of basic questions you’ll want to ask all of them. As we often say, it’s best to get all of this information out in the open early on.
How much experience do you have? – Experience. Experience. Experience. One of the most important qualities you’ll want to look for in a wedding photographer is experience, especially if that experience comes at the venue where you’ll be tying the knot. This will ensure they know all of the perfect angles to capture and will be in the right place at all times.
When will you receive the finished photos? – Many photographers will provide their clients with a sneak peek relatively soon after the wedding, and then send over the gallery later on. During your initial conversations with the photographer, make sure to ask about what these timelines may look like. You’re obviously going to be excited to see the finished product, so don’t hesitate to ask when you can expect them to be ready!
What is their pricing? – Another concept we’ve touched on a few times before here on the blog is budgeting. While it’s never the easiest of topics to discuss, it goes without saying that money is a major factor in planning your big day. From deciding who pays for what to breaking down how much you can spend for individual vendors, it’s a critical component. In terms of your wedding photographer, make sure to get their pricing structure out in the open ahead of time. Are there different packages? How many hours will the photographer(s) be on-site? What about pricing for the images afterwards?
Who will be on-site for my wedding? – This point is fully dependent on the company which you’re considering. In essence, you just want to know which person will actually be the one working your wedding and what their experience/past work is. The reason we say this is because some larger companies may have multiple photographers and the person you meet with may or may not be the one doing your wedding. While this isn’t the case with every single photography company, it is something worth keeping in mind!
What’s their style?
One thing you’ll notice about many wedding vendors is everyone has their own unique style. Can they differentiate from that? Of course, but a quick gander through their social media will likely reveal some similarities. In any case, when selecting your wedding photographer, get a feel for their overall style and determine if it meets the vision you had in mind for your big day. To sum it up, there are several different styles you’ll see portrayed when browsing through local photographer’s galleries. Whether that be more of a traditional approach, vintage-themed, dark and moody, or anything else, there are plenty of styles to consider.
How about their personality?
First and foremost, you want a photographer that is talented, and capable of capturing all of the most important details and moments. That is a given, right? However, it’s important to remember that this person will be a major part of your wedding celebration and likely be around you for most of the day. As such, wouldn’t it make sense to select a photographer that you’ll get along with and someone who can actually add to the overall fun? That can be said about any of your wedding vendors and definitely in regards to your photographer!
Do you have any friends or family that recently tied the knot?
While scrolling through social media pages and researching local photographers will certainly help you arrive at the perfect fit, another great avenue when it comes to finding potential options is through your friends and family. If you have any recently-married friends or family, ask them which photographer they used. For one, it’ll be easy to find full galleries and see if they might be a possible fit. However, another major advantage with this is the ability to learn more about the process in which they shoot a wedding. You can hear about the meetings leading up to the big day, what their mood/demeanor was on the actual wedding day and what their experiences were like following the wedding as it pertains to receiving the final photos.
Have you selected your wedding venue?
We hope you enjoyed this overview of tips to keep in mind when selecting your photographer and hopefully this will help you find someone capable of capturing all of those perfect moments. Before you start interviewing potential photographers though, one decision you’ll likely need to finalize first is selecting your dream wedding venue. We briefly talked about our venue in the opening paragraphs, but just to provide you with a quick synopsis: Madera Estates is a luxury event space located just north of Houston and The Woodlands. With a Spanish and European-inspired theme, we offer both all-inclusive wedding packages, as well as venue-only rentals. If you’re interested in learning more about our venue, feel free to click HERE to check out our online booking calendar.