Promotional Material

Well I suppose you would have to expect it. Photographers advertise their talent in trade. That is, they show you examples of their work that are inevitably from other sittings and / or weddings they have accepted. Since many photographers will also make their subjects sign over any rights they might have not to have their photos displayed for commercial purposes by the photographer themselves, this is their right. You could therefore potentially see a photograph of yourself winning a photography competition, appearing on a pamphlet or perhaps being sent out in an email to someone else.

The latter is the case with some friends of mine. A little less than two weeks ago, The Boy, The Pussycat and I attended the wedding of some close friends. We had a chance to meet the photographer properly as we also spent most of the day with the bride and groom acting as 2nd & 3rd shooter and videographer. The Boy and I have since however received an email from the photographer as part of the Bless The Bride with Blanket Brochures business, ie. not connected to our friends wedding at all. From seeing the photographer and their work on the day, The Boy and I both felt that we had still not yet found the right person for our wedding but I was glancing over the rates for comparison when I thought one of the images looked familiar.

I remembered a location we had been to for the formal photos of our friends and a pose that the bride and groom had adopted for one of the shots. When I had a closer look at that particular image however, and then took in the other two photos on the page as well, I realised they were all from our friends’ wedding that we had attended two weekends ago. Its flattering I suppose to know that your images are considered worthy of being used as promotional material and more attractive than other photos owned by the photographer. I actually kind of like the idea and it would amuse me if a shot of my wedding actually made it into a magazine or something. The Boy doesn’t quite share my opinion however. I guess we’ll see what happens to our shots. Of course, we still kind of have to choose a photographer first!

The Hands On Approach

What is it with some females in the wedding industry and someone elses man? Do they figure that at the point a guy is shopping for something with his fiancée then you can flirt and touch as much as you want because they wouldn’t expect you meant anything by it? Or maybe its one of those things where you think the way to get the man on side with whatever you’re selling is to make him feel that the service is personal in more ways than one? I really don’t know.

I probably would not have thought much about it either except that The Boy mentioned he was made rather uncomfortable by one of the vendors at the Wedding Extravaganza we went to last night. Also because this is the second time I have heard of a groom’s personal space being invaded in an unwelcome manner. It seems that some women really like getting their hands on a man. They’ll hold a hand for a fraction too long or they’ll touch an arm almost as a caress. Perhaps this angle normally works well for them when the guy is engaged with whatever they’re discussing and not wishing he was anywhere else with more testosterone. The males that I know however don’t like it at all.

As far as The Boy and the other groom were concerned, it was inappropriate to be that familiar without invitation and doubly inappropriate to be so in front of the fiancée. Both men felt extremely uncomfortable and somewhat put on the spot. They had no wish to “make it an issue” and especially in front of their partner at that. I am not one of those desperately jealous women ready to claw any other female’s eyes out if she dares to cast her glance over The Boy. I am more likely to laugh cause I know that she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting anywhere if she cared to try. I am however offended that that type of female would help give other women a bad name and affect the men in my life. If you need to touch someone that desperately, get your own damn man.

Bless The Bride

Bless The Bride. May she be inundated with spam she neither invited nor requested!

So it seems that what they don’t tell you when you go to these bridal fairs is that when you inevitably enter the main competition to win free stuff like receptions (because why wouldn’t you want to get a $20,000 gift certificate, if you couldn’t abide the vendor in question you could just sell it for a profit), you open the flood gates to numerous bridal suppliers who want to sell their wares door to door, so to speak. A couple of weeks ago now, The Boy and I went out to Blacktown Bless The Bride Expo cause it seemed a good idea at the time and over the past couple of days we have been inundated with emails and letters.

Since they have all started arriving at once, I am guessing that the organisers of the expo held onto the competition entries for a defined period of time, perhaps to give a head start to any company you had already entered into negotiations with as a result of the day. They have obviously now sold or perhaps even given their list out to the various suppliers however since we have had reception venues, photographers, celebrants and florists etc contact us to offer their specialised services. They all hope we had a “wonderful time” at the expo and, just in case we have not yet secured the type of service for our wedding that they also can offer, they would like to forward their “expo only special” for our consideration.

Well, considering that we are planning a church service for our wedding (and were we not, we are personally friends with 2 registered celebrants / pastors), we will not actually be requiring the services of another celebrant for our day. I am of the opinion that drycleaners who charge you a premium merely to clean a dress they assume you’ll never wear again and put it in a box are both a waste of money and a waste of space. Unlike everyone else out there, I am looking into alternatives to paper stationary that would require hours of me cutting myself and gluing my fingers together in order to create each individual invitation and the absolute last thing I want for my wedding album is something in the guaranteed to date “magazine style”. Apart from that, if we didn’t follow up your services at the time, we’re probably not going to now, and in retrospect I only came away from the bridal expo with sore feet and a couple of bags full of pamphlets that have been sitting on the dining table since I brought them home.

Thanks anyway.

Whats My Theme?

So what is your theme…?

Theme?? What theme? Why do I need a theme? I said yes, he says I do, so do I and then we all go and get drunk. It is the Australian way. Nobody said anything about a theme before I started this thing!

Ok so that sounds a little bogan and I’m not quite that ignorant. I have now seen enough bridal mags to know that every man and his dog feels they should wax poetic about the subject of themes at a wedding. All the experts in the industry believe with a conviction bordering on obsession that one needs to first envisage a theme that will help provide a cohesive experience on the day. A theme that is made up of all the minutiae possible in order to evoke the desired emotions from the guests and indeed also the bride and groom themselves.

They advocate such things as sitting down with your partner and outlining your likes, dislikes, desires and preferences in order to find where your ideas mesh and what common threads run through the majority of your list. That’s all very well unless you’re a bridezilla, in which case you don’t actually care what your partner thinks anyway, or you can’t really see a theme evolving unless you throw out one idea or another for the sake of the whole. Although maybe that comes back to the Bridezilla idea except that theres twice the force with a Groomzilla involved as well…?

As you can tell, I’m a little frustrated at the moment. And difficult. I don’t particularly want to pick a theme right now because whatever option seems close still does not feel quite right. Can’t I just have the theme Things I Like?? Unfortunately I have not been planning this day in my head since I was a little girl. I don’t know exactly what I want yet. How my wedding day actually pans out will not be the fulfilment of a long cherished dream harboured close to my heart but rather the culmination of rough ideas fused together over a couple of months. Maybe that can be my theme. Fusion. Combining the seemingly incongruous to form an aesthetically diverse day...

Sounds like a plan, no? It does have one major disadvantage however – it doesn’t make it any easier to choose a damn thing!