August 2019 – Jericha Good

We have officially booked our photographer. It is such a relief to say that! Booking your photographer and venue should be the first things you do for wedding planning. For us, it was particularly important to get our engagement photos done ASAP since we are planning on using them for save the dates. We are having a destination wedding so we have to send save the dates out early.

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For me, there were 4 things I was looking for in a photographer. Those are:

Are they good at using natural lighting? We are getting married outdoors so this is important.
Is he/she local to the area? This is important for two reasons. The first being that we don’t have to pay for travel expenses. The second being, our photographer knows what the lighting will be like at the time of our ceremony and knows the best places to take photos.
Have they shot at the ceremony/reception site before? Seeing real wedding photos of our ceremony and reception site gave us inspiration. It also allowed us to see the different locations where we can take photos.
What is the photographer’s style? I knew going into this that I want classic wedding photos and nothing too artsy or trendy. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a time and place for artsy style photos. I want photos that will withstand the test of time; not photos that I will look back on and think “what were we thinking?”

After taking engagement photos, I am definitely a strong believer everyone should (even if you don’t use them for anything). This really got us comfortable with our photographer. We also love our engagement photos so we are confident we will love our wedding photos. After interviewing a few photographers it seems that most of them will use your engagement photo fee towards your deposit for the day of the wedding. Most photographers will give you a discount if you have a wedding during the off season or a Monday-Thursday wedding (some will give discounts for Friday and Sunday too).