Location, location, location!

While not every bride dreams of having a Kim Kardashian style wedding with huge walls of flowers as a backdrop for their ceremony and formal photos, most brides do want their wedding to be a memorable and beautiful event. One of the important considerations in planning all weddings is where the ceremony and the wedding reception will take place. How much you should spend, what about permissions to get married in parks, what about accommodation for guests, food and drinks, transport for the bride and groom to get there, arriving via water, air or even on horseback, are all valid concerns? Of course location possibilities are absolutely endless.

Getting married in a luxurious five star resort somewhere might be fine for celebrities and hugely wealthy businessmen but stretching a moderate wedding budget beyond its flexibility will just be stressful for all concerned. 

So why is an expensive location really necessary? With the amount of specialist wedding hire companies it is just as easy to organise an inexpensive location to hold your wedding and decorate it in a style that you yourself feel is suitable for your aesthetic, budget and flair.

With a little bit of imagination and a few helpers to set the scene it is possible to create a perfect environment which will be comfortable for your guests and also picture perfect for your wedding photography at a relatively small cost.

Polly and Denver's wedding shoot was held at a very pretty location just at the edge of a typical Australian bushland area. With some beautiful pieces from Pretty and Perfect Vintage Hire this location looks every bit as beautiful as Kim Kashdashian and Kanye West's wall of roses.

             

Remembering Those Memories...3 Ways to Keep              Your Wedding Day Alive

So the party is over! 

After months of preparation, anticipation, expense and the emotional roller coaster that organising a wedding entails the pressure is off, life returns to normal and you now ask yourself "what am I left with?"

Hopefully the marriage has lasted beyond the honeymoon! So with any luck you still have your beautiful partner who will be with you for sometime to come. 

Of course the other most important thing that you have is your wedding photos. These are the things that your children and eventually your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will treasure as the trace of where they come from...and it becomes all the more important as people age. Great wedding photos will document the very moment that you were at your most beautiful and most hopeful about your life into the future with your partner.

This is why such a big industry surrounds the wedding photography business. Many photographers realise the fundamental importance of what they are photographing as recognising an historic moment in someones life. 

So what is the best way for preserving these memories that may be handed down over the generations to your descendants?

Prints of photographs have a visceral kind of quality that is very special and having a framed print on the sideboard of a happy couple  on their wedding day is a really great statement of where it all began. Prints can be made up from the digital negatives that your wedding photographer will provide or some photographers, for a price, will make up prints and a print album for you. 

A digital slide show with music is another way of showing people your photographs and this can be as simple or as complicated as you like. You can ask the photographer and the videographer to put together a multimedia extravaganza or it could be a very simple and effective slide presentation that can be shared across the web. 

At Pledge Weddings our favourite means of presenting work is in a Blurb book which can sit on a coffee table and also be viewed on the net. Copies can be supplied to the family as limited editions and its a great way to display the whole narrative of the day. Its also a document that will stand the test of time and can keep all of your photos together in one place.

A combination of all three presentation methods will ensure that you will have something to leave for the generations to come.

Here is one of Pledge Wedding Photography's books celebrating James and Lydia...

http://www.blurb.com/books/3512570-pledge-weddings

            Does Size Really Count?

 One of the most difficult things to ascertain when you first decide to get married is how big a wedding you want....

In a world where even the price of air seems to be expensive, how on earth do you make a decision on how many friends, relatives and extras that you need to invite to your wedding party to satisfy everyone's needs?

While often people understand that prohibitive costs in organising a wedding may mean that their new boyfriend may not be able to accompany them or that the girlfriend you have never met may just have to be introduced to you at another time, it can be quite tricky trying to figure out whether Aunty Sheila will be able to attend or whether your mother's best friend from her schooldays should be invited too.

It can be a minefield working out whose feelings you may hurt if they don't receive that gilt edged wedding invitation.

Budget should be one of the major factors in determining  the size or amount of people you decide to invite to your wedding and once set you should not deviate from your planned numbers.

But who says that the only wedding party should be a big one? Small intimate weddings comprising of only a few people can really be a far more relaxing and enjoyable occasion than a large and expensive affair. 

While the wedding industry is for the most part extremely professional and most wedding service providers will try and accommodate most people's requests, no matter how interesting those requests might be, these services rarely come without a reasonable price tag.

So why not spare yourself the seemingly endless expense of a huge wedding and plan a small and intimate affair? A few really close friends is often all you need to celebrate the occasion and newly married couples don't need thousands of photos of the same thing... they only need to have a few really beautiful shots to summarise their special day.

So when you begin to plan your wedding think carefully who the wedding party is really for and who you really want to share the day with.... 

     Pretty and Perfect...Vintage Teacups and Things

There is nothing quite like drinking a delicate tea from a fine China teacup... That's something in our busy modern day lives we really don't experience anymore. Anyone whose roots lie in the country may remember the time when beautiful teacakes and teacups were de rigueur after a Saturday afternoon tennis match at their great grandmothers country house.

High tea with a bunch of giggling girlfriends for no particular reason, a bridal shower,  engagement party or a wedding luncheon are all perfect occasions  to celebrate in style with pretty and perfect vintage things.

After a lifetime of collecting gorgeous China, antique glasses and other lovely party things Janet Dixon Hughes is now prepared to see her beautiful collection being enjoyed by others whose refined vision of the world include long cool verandahs and the wonderful scent of fresh fruit cake.

The proprietor of Pretty and Perfect Vintage Party Hire has so many pretty things to share that even the most minimalist amongst us will be melted with the delightful girliness of it all.

Ms Dixon Hughes is offering a free high-tea setting for an afternoon in a celebration to mark the beginning of spring and Pledge Wedding Photography will do a complimentary photo session at the same time for the lucky girl or guy who can write and tell us why teacups and teacakes are important to them.

So ladies and gents start composing that wonderful prose. The best entries will also be published on this blog.

Janet Dixon Hughes of Pretty and Perfect can be contacted on 0438 443 882. 

 Five Things To Remember About Getting Married

Getting married is one of the biggest decisions most people make in their lifetimes... but not for the reasons you think it is. While the romance and pleasure of getting married, getting hitched or tying the knot can sometimes overwhelm a couple's sense of perspective and the bill to pay for a wedding party can be equivalent to a third world country debt, getting married is not all about wearing white and getting great photos. Here are five things to remember about getting married...

1/ Its About Commitment 

Sometimes everyone gets out of bed the wrong way. Sometimes its really hard to agree on things, even as simple as what Sunday night television program you are going to watch together. Sometimes its really hard to say sorry. But commitment to a relationship and hanging in there for the good times and the bad is what psychologists often site as the most important reason to get married and the best way to stay that way. 

2/ Its About Being Best Friends

Psychologists point out that marriage partners are not only lifetime lovers but are also best friends. They are people whom you can share your inner most self with and hopefully they will understand your bad hair day episodes. Best friends are people, who as we get older, are harder to replace because they have been there for those days when everything is going wrong or to join us in celebrating the high points. And they don't flinch when you ask them for their support.

3/ Its About The Good Times...

Things are more fun when you have someone to share things with. That  someone could be all manner of people or...well dogs, horses and cats...but the fact is it can get really lonely if every experience you have is only experienced through one set of eyes. Long-term companionship is a priceless gift.

4/...And The Bad

Not every marriage is going to be a wonderland. Many end in disaster. Yet being realistic and grounded about the bad times can really help in understanding why you got married in the first place and can take a lot of pressure off you both when things go wrong. Just because things are bad for some of the time doesn't mean they are going to be that way forever.

5/ Its About Give And Take

Whatever decisions you make about getting married, life directions, where to live, how to live, children and family, marriage is always about give and take. No two people are the same and when one wants one thing and another wants another it doesn't mean its all over. It just means communication is one of the most important aspects of married life. Just always remember to keep talking.