Tip #1
You can save yourself an enormous amount of money if you are open to being married during the off-season months of January, February, March and November. A Boston Wedding in December becomes a bit hectic with the holidays, parties and shopping, so we’ve omitted that month here. With Boston Weddings, it’s important to remember that if you DO decide to hold your wedding during one of these ‘off’ months, to hold them early in the day, as the sun goes down by 4:30pm and outdoor shots are next-to impossible without additional lighting during this season.

And if a winter wedding is not the wedding you have always dreamed of having, consider being married and holding your wedding on a Sunday. It’s another great way to save some cash, as vendors do most work on Saturday’s and a Sunday is not typically a popular day. A Sunday wedding can be elegant and chic. Be unique!

Tip #2
There isn’t an official name for this disease and it isn’t regional to just Boston brides, but many brides get it. If you identify it early, you can save yourself (and your family & friends) hours of anguish:
1st Symptom – Just about 3 months before your wedding, you begin to second-guess your every decision.
2nd Symptom – You grow increasingly scared and spend (what feels like) every waking hour obsessing about what more you can do to make your wedding better or more unique or more creative or more shabby-chic or more retro or more zen or more elegant or more….
3rd Symptom – Then you’ll ask friends, family, co-workers or essentially anyone that will listen to you about what they think of your new ideas and cry foul when they don’t seem to feel as strongly or as passionately about making improvements as you do.
4th Symptom – and most dangerous…you make a few phone calls and start upgrading a few of your packages.

The Cure – Trust. Just trust. Stick to your original budget. As the wedding draws near, your emotions, nerves, excitement, or gasp! the Martha Stewart in you begins to take over…ignore them (or her.). If you’ve outlined the vision that you have for your day from the beginning, your day will be beautiful. This includes your wedding photography. The only time you may want to upgrade is if your timeline has significantly changed for reasons beyond your control.

Tip #3
Holding your reception in a hotel has good points that you may not have even considered. Hotels can often decorate, have professional services (concierge, planners, etc.) and most likely will include the honeymoon suite as a part of your booking, with discounted rooms for out-of-town guests. Especially the larger hotels like Taj Boston, Langham Hotel, Intercontinental and Copley Marriott.

If you’re having a wedding with 75 guests or under, consider having your reception at your favorite restaurant. You will already know the staff and how the food is and you can often reserve the restaurant or, at least, a portion of it. This can help you to save a significant amount of money, as well.

Tip #4
Photographers charge too much?

Photographer’s equipment and workflow costs alone are quite sizable. There are batteries, flash cards, wear and tear on their vehicle, venue insurance coverage and, most importantly, the hours of work on and after the wedding that is factored into their pricing. Your paying for creative talent, not just in photoshop, but behind the camera when the work of capturing the images is done. You can save money on enlargements and albums but don’t penny pinch when it comes to the photographer. After your wedding day, the tangible memories, the ones that you can put in your hands and hold, are your photos. Everything else resides in your memory. Nothing else will endure and be passed down from generation to generation the way that your wedding photography will be.

Hire a photographer that gives you your digital high-resolution files, that way you can make as many re-prints of the photography from your wedding day as you’d like. However, for particularly special images or those that you wish to frame and showcase in your home, it’s highly recommended that you order the prints from your wedding photographer. Photographers have access to professional printers that use archival quality paper that will last for generations, unlike the print runs at Target, and the inks are UV-resistant and colors remain true over generations.

$1000.00 for a photographer is a great price but if they charge $100.00 for an 8 X 10, where is the savings? Don’t just look at the photo packages or wedding day shoot costs, ask how much their albums and prints are as well. It’s only worthwhile to pay $1000.00 to a wedding photographer if they actually give you the images once the wedding is over. Ask the questions. There is a tremendous amount of fine print and cost associated with photographers that have prices that seem almost ‘too good to be true.’

Lastly, define ‘retouching’ with your photographer. The term ‘retouching’ is used loosely within the wedding photography industry, never mind with clients. Retouching can mean simply ‘color correcting’ (Which simply means ensuring the color temperature of your photos is correct) This is the simplest of retouching practices. We consider this the bare minimum, but many area wedding photographers get away with this technique and call it ‘retouching.’ Few Boston Boutique Photographers go through each and every photo and retouch skin, remove non-permanent blemishes, stray hairs, remove distractions such as huge exit signs behind a stunning photo of a bride….and that’s just the basics. It’s very important to distinguish exactly what a photographer is going to do to your photos after your big day. It’s the difference between spending 2 hours for color correction and 40 hours going through each photo and making each a true masterpiece.

Tip #5
Let’s face it, the only service you NEED to get married is an officiant.

However, most Boston wedding coordinators can save you money because they know…

About all the tips mentioned above plus more..
What to say to and ask your vendors..
Important connections in the industry..

You really don’t need a coordinator at your reception once the dance floor is open to your guests. That usually happens between 9-10pm.

You could hire a wedding consultant to help with the final stages of your wedding: creating a detailed wedding day itinerary, making up a checklist of items for the ceremony & reception locations, and confirming with your vendors. While they won’t be in attendance at your wedding, they have planned the day smoothly on paper. As long as you follow the times closely (not exactly) and hold the events in the same order as the itinerary states, you’ll be fine.

You can appoint a friend or family member to be your honorary coordinator. Give them an itinerary, checklists (ceremony & reception items, photo and music list) and phone numbers for all your vendors. The honorary coordinator should be someone that’s organized, the more obsessive-compulsive the better and not scared to open their mouth when something goes wrong (or right!)

Well that’s it folks – just a few thoughts, like we said. Our Best of Boston Wedding tips is complete. Don’t skip over the hours of sunlight during the winter or forget about Daylight Savings Time. These can both have dramatic affect on your time line when planning your day and your Boston Wedding Photography.

Cheers!

And let’s not forget our new line of albums – we use a variety of different manafacturers and we send out at the beginning of each year to update production and portfolios. These are the first to come back for January 2009.

It’s refreshing to see industry peers and clients alike understanding that, despite all the savings opportunities that are available to you when planning your wedding, photography is not the place to cut corners. The reality is, the flowers and cake last the day, but the photos are the tangible memories that you’ll have that tell the story of one of your most important days – and those memories should never be skimped on.

In this industry, and with no one particular in mind, we’ve known several folks who truly believe that a ‘picture is a picture’ and genuinely have a difficult time understanding the value in quality photography for their wedding. Even before we began photographing weddings, we never quite understood how or why, out of all the areas a person can choose to explore cost savings, their photography would be the element they think can cut back on.

The reality is that, long after everyone forgets the food, the cake, the flowers and even the speeches or toasts there will be your photos, albums, even canvases for the walls – there will be your memories and the visual testimony to all of the happiness, the food, the speeches, the smiles, tears, the private moments and the way that you or your bride looked in that dress and it’s those photos that will be endure forever. And let’s even forget the present, let’s think of kids and grandkids. Imagine your children and grand-children pouring over those photos many, many years from now and having a beautiful testament to your wedding and the marriage that made their life possible.

…and the color version (we couldn’t decide which we liked better.)