found a photographer

Finding a good wedding photographer was very important to me. I had read numerous articles, blog posts, etc. about how the wedding photographer is one of the most important people on your wedding day – after all, they are the only vendor that provides you with a lasting keepsake of your wedding, so I wanted to get someone good.

But, wedding photography is EXPENSIVE. It can range from $2,000 upwards to $14,000, which is crazy. Though in my experience of looking at various photographers, you get what you pay for. This is something that you should make some cushion room in your budget, because it’s worth spending on. Like I said before, if you don’t have a videographer (we aren’t planning on getting one), then your photographs will be the only things you have to remember your wedding day. It was important to me not to chance it!

Before I dive into how I went about choosing a wedding photographer for me, I want to address why we’ve chosen not to get a videographer. Some people will read this and gasp, thinking we’ve made a big mistake, but a videographer to me seemed superfluous. Matt and I are not the type of people to sit around years later and reminisce about our wedding day by watching a video. We are both incredibly awkward people, and I think a video would just make us both uncomfortable. That’s not to say that we would never look back on our wedding day! I could totally see us looking through a photo album, or going through pictures on our phones.

With that all said, Matt and I did have a photographer do our engagement pictures (more on that later), but decided to find someone else with a bit more experience to photograph our wedding.

So, like I did with every other step of this wedding planning process, I started researching. And researching. And researching. I believe that in all I looked at different photographers for a couple weeks. All this researching helped me in two ways – I got a good idea of the range that I was comfortable in spending, and what style I was looking for.

I realized that I was drawn to photographs with lots of natural light, that weren’t staged or posed, and detail shots – I LOVE detail shots. I’m also interested in submitting my wedding in a wedding editorial like Southern Weddings, Style Me Pretty, or Green Wedding Shoes, so I was looking for someone who had their photos featured before.

Many, many photographers were just way too expensive, or weren’t in the style that I was looking for, but there were two that interested me – Brett & Jessica Photography and Emily March Photography.

They were both great in their own ways, and I had a hard time choosing between the two. In the end, I decided to go with Emily March Photography because her photographs looked more professional, more artistic – almost like something in an editorial magazine, she had a better eye for framing pictures, and the overall lighting and look of her photographs just resonated with me personally.

With Emily, her love of God shines through her pictures, and after speaking with her, I got the sense they she genuinely loves shooting weddings – she talked about why this was a passion of hers for most of our phone conversation, which I loved! She understands marriage from a biblical aspect, and her photographs reflect that.

I know that a lot of people recommend scheduling a shoot with the photographer before the actual wedding day (Emily included), but since we already had engagement photos done, it seemed a bit redundant to have them re-shot. For a few weeks I threw around the idea of bridal portraits, as well.

It seems that bridal portraits (having a photoshoot of the bride’s hair, makeup, dress, and bouquet before the wedding, to be displayed at the reception) are something that is a southern tradition. Growing up in New Jersey, I never attended a wedding with a bridal portrait, but I have been to weddings down south with them.

I emailed Emily about her thoughts. She sent me a link to a great post about the benefits of a bridal session, but in the end I decided that it wasn’t something for me, mostly because of the budget (and I was also afraid of getting my pretty dress ruined before the big day – I am that kind of person). There are a few things when it comes to weddings that you can cut out and no one is going to think anything of it – I felt like bridal portraits were one of those things.

Missed a wedding Wednesday post? Here's our engagement story, choosing the colors, choosing the bridal party, picking the venue, and ordering a wedding dress & shoes.