Wedding tips: What I learnt from my wedding (Photography by Applehead Studio)

7 months has now past since Cameron & I tied the knot on Carters Beach- a beautiful white sandy beach on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, then reception at White Point. Don’t the photographs look like they were taken at a caribbean destination wedding! I thought as so many people get engaged in the winter months that now might be a good time for me to write this blog. I have given a lot of this advice to couples who have met with me for booking their wedding photography but this is the first time you’ll see it all written down and photographs shared from my own wedding!

1. Book a wedding photographer you trust
   All of the photographs in this post were taken by the wonderful Liam & Steph from Applehead Studio Photography based in Halifax, NS. The most often asked question through all of my planning and I even still get asked about it now was, ‘As a wedding photographer yourself, how to your choose a wedding photographer for your own wedding’ My answer generally went something like this- ‘That was the easiest part of wedding planning, I had followed Applehead’s work since I had worked at a lab in Halifax which printed photographs for him and every photograph was amazing, as has been every photograph post to their facebook/instagram pages. One of my catchphrases may as well be ‘Hey Cameron, check out this amazing photograph Applehead has post’. I have looked up to his work for years and was so happy to have been able to get them to photograph our wedding.
   
2. Get a wedding planner
   As I work in the wedding industry and we had 2 years to plan the wedding I thought that I would be able to do it all myself. One of the things I regret is not getting a wedding planner to help me to find a makeup artist (see the next point) and to help with set up/day of co-ordination. Having the wedding in NS meant I was starting from scratch for vendors, I often joke that if we had got married here in London that I could have planned the wedding in a weekend as I know all of the amazing local vendors. I did all the fun stuff first which is what I always recommend such as finding the dress and going cake tasting. Many of the things in this post will would have been helped if we had a planner and I truly believe it would have really helped with stress levels. One of the things you will hear me say every morning from now on for every wedding I photograph will be ‘do you have your lipstick’ as that was forgotten, along with my birdcage veil which we were going to use for photos. I haven’t mentioned yet but I was maid of honour only 1 month before my big day as well as organizing everything for out of town guests and also running my business. At one point I actually had my first ever panic attack (while driving) and I’m usually one of the most level headed, stress free people that there is. So, get a wedding planner!
3. Have trials
   Organizing a wedding out of province has many difficulties,  including which vendors to book but the main difficulty I had with was finding a great makeup artist. I had 2 trials before I ended up booking a makeup artist who was a bit more expensive, but much better quality of work. My advice is that if something doesn’t feel right, don’t settle! I had a wonderful hair stylist Shannon who I also had a trial with but knew she would do a great job so luckily only had to do the one trial to book that!
   
4. Leave more time than you think for getting ready
   Our makeup artist ended up being 45 mins late because of construction but she still did an amazing job as we had left more than enough time. We left around 10 mins late and that brings me to the next point.
   
5. Whatever time you want the ceremony to start, put an earlier time on the invitations. 
   I was determined to not be late to the ceremony as I know that means it will cut into photography time. As the makeup artist had run late I just grabbed my jewellery and put it on in the car so that we were there within minutes of the ceremony start time. With only 40 guests I really didn’t think that anyone would run late but there were 4 car loads full of people pull up after us (including the grooms father, grandmother and other VIP’s) so their first look of me was holding up my dress in the car park. Classy.
   
6. Do a rehearsal and meet your officiant 
   We went to the beach the night before, just with the wedding party and did a quick run through, but again with the difficulties of planning from afar, we hadn’t met our officiant or run through our ceremony beforehand. This meant that we forgot that we were going to get a crowd participation thing- instead of getting everyone to say ‘we will’ we were going to get everyone to ‘tie the knot’ with us and collect the knots to keep in a jar, but we forgot all about that. Our officiant also mixed our names up so at the all important ‘I do’ part of the ceremony Cameron and Erin became ‘Carin’.. which ended up being a hashtag and a funny story.. Also funny was that my ring wouldn’t go on my finger so I just licked it and made him finish putting my gorgeous custom made/vintage inspired on.
   
7. Have a shot list for your photographer of the friend and family groups. 
   I had emailed this list to our photographers but, me being me, I also had it saved on my phone.  Having a list of all of these groups and doing the friend and family groups straight after the ceremony while everyone is still fresh (which for all of our aussies and east coasters of course meant before they started drinking) made it much easier than trying to grab people to do photos like this at the reception. I went into wedding photog hulk mode running the show for quickly grabbing all of the friend and family groups we wanted. I actually really hope that there is some video of that!
   
8. Get a videographer for the important moments of the day
   I had originally thought that I would just get one of the groomsmen to set up my camera at the ceremony and at the speeches, the two moments that I knew I would want audio of. When I mentioned this to my friend Arthur when we were at a photography conference last year he was willing (even with a wife at home who was 8 months pregnant) to come out to NS and capture those moments for us which you can see here in the trailer. Arthur and I love working together on weddings so he offers a special package to all of my clients, send me an email if you’re interested!
9. Uncle Bob
   This is somewhat of an industry term for the family member at the wedding who has their camera in the way of shots. We literally had 2 Bobs-my uncle Bob and my dad Bob being there, I only really remember this one time (photograph below which is my hurry-up-and-take-this-picture-of-us-doing-our-speech-then-sit-back-in-your-seat smile) that they got in the way. I am all for unplugged weddings but it’s also not really my style, when I’m a guest at a wedding, I want my own photographs to remember the day by so I personally didn’t do unplugged.(Photograph by the man that gave me my first camera- my Dad)
10. Do things in your style/ to fit your personality. 
    Everything about our wedding was our style, the beach, the location of the photos was where Cam proposed, the sand ceremony was combining sand from the beach we were married on and sand from my local beach in Australia, his groom gift being a boudoir/pin up mix album, my ritchie dog ring bearer (you may recognize him from my arm tattoo), despite our height difference I still wore 3 of my fave pairs of flat Toms including a custom painted Up! inspired pair, relaxed vintage quilt seating on the beach, walking down the aisle and dancing our first dance to Hanson (my fave band), our entry into the reception song being a DMX anthem (we’re both big rap/hip hop fans), having Cards Against Humanity for everyone who didn’t want to dance. Personalized DIY details which were driven across the county like the lego mini figure seat chart, various other decor and signs including the sign which had how many kms and what locations our guests had travelled from by Lily Lane Decor and items from Lavish Events by Design, the Brooch and seashell bouquets and sand dollar boutineers, thrifted vintage/kitchy/nautical themed centerpeices and tea cup and hand-painted sugar cookie favours by Thats all she baked. Everything pink including the tulle added to my dress by Krystyna’s Alterations and the belt from Once Upon a Time Wedddings. Being thrifty is also very ‘us’ so by having the wedding on a monday- some vendors (including me) will give discounts if your wedding is on a day other than saturday.
    
    I always say that people remember 3 things about weddings-
    – The food ours was fine, I couldn’t eat much as my dress was so tight- I literally had bruises on my ribs for 2.5 weeks from the boning in the dress.
    – The weather usually that time of year in NS it is an overcast 18 degrees and we got a sunny 26- we all got sunburnt so that’s another piece of advice, bring sunscreen!
    – How much fun they had our DJ literally had to be shut down by the venue as our guests kept wanting to dance past 1am on a monday night! The fun part also covers having those nearest and dearest there for the big day.
    But I think there are always going to be some other memorable moments which, when captured by the photographer will mean so much more in years to come-
    Getting dropped in the first dance when you go into a dip
    
    Slideshow and secret recorded messages from best friends that weren’t able to be there
    
    First look with dad
    
    Fireworks
    
    Stopping for ice cream during the photos (This actually was the inspiration for my ice cream tattoo)
    
    Timewarp interlude with father and daughter dance
    

Balancing very precariously on a rock by the freezing Atlantic Ocean for full moon night photos

Again, all of our beautiful photographs were captured by Applehead Studio Photography!