How To Create A Wedding Budget

Did you know the average wedding in Indiana cost $31,996 in 2018?

How to pay for something like that? Well the first step is that you need a budget. Plain and simple. But don't worry because what we talk about today isn't going to just be “Save save save” Im going to give you some practical tips that will put you in control and help you plan a personally fulfilling and fun wedding day.

Creating a wedding budget consists of 3 parts. How much money you and your fiance have saved or have access to, how much you CAN save before your wedding day, and how much help family and loved ones determine they can contribute Financially. Do your best to come up with a figure. Even if its a ballpark figure. That's fine for now.

The first step for you and your fiance and start this process together. It's your wedding just as much as it is theirs and this is the great way to work on a large project together as a team. You only NEED 2 things to get married. An officiant and a location. Everything else is extra. So sit down and make a list of everything that you WANT at your wedding. Start this list off by each naming 1 MUST HAVE. Something that will make your day extra special and more memorable. It might be a live band or open bar, or it could be a A special dress or a Photo Booth at your reception. Don't spend too much time here, there is a good chance that deeper into the wedding planning that may change. A specific venue or that one perfect wedding photographer

Pro tip: Use a Trello board or google docs to keep notes, todo lists, and even your budget then you can share access to the document with your significant other so you can collaborate and keep each other updated.

Next start with your list of wants. Ceremony, Decorations and flowers, Dress and attire, Reception, ect. Then do some quick research no more than 20 mins on each to gauge a price, pinterest will be your best help for ideas, and then google for finding local vendors. As a wedding venue in New York city will cost much more than one here in Indiana.

Average cost percentage breakdown

  • Dress and attire account for 10% of your budget

  • The Ceremony will account for 15%

  • Decorations and flowers, 15%

  • Photography and videography 20%

  • The reception 35%

  • And then 5% for miscellaneous charges. Uncorking fees, set up and tear down fees, ect.

Those numbers are just averages and can obviously be adjusted to fit your wedding and your personalities. If you don’t need a videographer for your wedding, cut a portion and reapply the extra somewhere else!

Now take the number you came up with earlier for your budget and apply the percentages to it. Now you have a ballpark on what you will be spending on certain aspects of your wedding day. Then start booking vendors. Book those most important to you first so that if the prices of vendors differ from what you budgeted you can adjust on the non essentials.

Typically wedding venues and photographers get booked first, within the first 2-3 months of your engagement. The venue first because if it's really important to you, can predicate your wedding date. Once you have a venue locked in you can start hiring other vendors depending on their availability. So spend most of your time in the beginning planning process focused on booking them. Once they are booked everything else will fall into place!

That's how you get started with your wedding budget.

If you get overwhelmed at any point by budgeting there are a lot of options that can help keep your wedding from getting out of control. Things like editing your guest-list. According to that $32000 number the average wedding guest costs you $237. Cut down your guest list by just 4 or 5 and you have saved a good chunk of money. You could also pick a different venue, chose a DJ over a live band or for serious savings, get married on a Monday!

At the end of the day your wedding is about joining your life with the person you love most. So remind yourself that you can take a step back take a deep breath and remember no matter what decisions you make your still getting married to your best friend.

Need a Wedding Photographer?

Get in touch today for pricing and availability for your wedding day!

How Many Hours of Wedding Photography Do You Need?

How Many Hours of Wedding Photography Do You Need?

Once you start looking for a wedding photographer and reading over their different wedding collections you will see that most wedding photographers offer several different wedding collections based on time. But if you have never been married before, how to you know how much time you need your photographer for? Today I'm going to help you decide how much wedding photography coverage you need in just 4 simple questions.

Questions to ask

  • Are you going to have a grand exit at the end of the night you want the photographer to cover?

  • Is the ceremony and reception in the same place?

  • Are you having a first look?

  • And how important to you are getting ready photos?

Let’s talk about why those questions affect how much wedding photography coverage you need.

Are you doing a grand exit at the end of the night?

If you're doing a grand exit and you want the photographer to cover, that will dictate the end of the coverage. So if you know your exit will be at 10, then you can work backwards from there. If you are not doing a grand exit, Budget for the photographer to be at the reception for 2 hours. That’s typically enough to cover the entrance, cake cutting, dances, toast, and after a certain amount of time all dancing photos start to look the same.

Is the Ceremony and Reception in the same location?

Indy has some great venues like mustard seed gardens that pull double duty and let you do both in the same location. Get married under the old oak tree and party in the big red barn! Having both the ceremony and reception in the same location can save you a lot of time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen what should be a 10 mins car ride take over an hour. People never know what they need to bring, where it is, where they are going, or where to park when they get there. That drive time can eat into portraits and if you booked just 5-6 hours every minute is important!

Are you having a first look?

A first look is when you and your soon to be spouse see each other the day of the wedding before the ceremony and have it photographed. Why would this affect how much time you need to book with your wedding photographer? Traditionally family photos, bridal party photos, and wedding portraits happen in between the ceremony and the reception. This is usually when the cocktail hour is for guests to keep them occupied while your bridal party and you are out busy with the photographer. If you do a first look before the ceremony, you can also do all of your bridal portraits and bridal party photos if you choose! Freeing you up to go straight from the ceremony to the reception and meet with guests. Saving you an hour of time coverage.

How important are getting ready photos?

There is a lot of prep the morning of the wedding but it usually consists of hair, makeup and mimosas. This is a time where you and all of your bridesmaids relax sharing old stories, listening to music, getting in your dresses, and laughing. This can be a great opportunity to get some candid photos of you all hanging out and having a good time before the day gets started. It's a good idea to establish how important these photos are to you as it typically takes about an hour or more to photograph the getting ready part of the day. And while the photos really help tell the story of your wedding day especially in the album these photos are rarely shared online since its before you have gone through hair or makeup.

Examples:

10+ Hours

If you are having a grand exit at 10, your ceremony is at 2, your ceremony and reception are not at the same location, you’re not doing a first look, and getting ready photos are very important to you, I would recommend 10+ hours of coverage. From 2pm for your ceremony to 10pm for your exit, is 8 hours, add 2 for getting ready photos is 10 hours.

Nicole Jacob Wedding RAW1981.jpg

8 Hours

Most weddings can be confidently captured with 8 hours of coverage. This allows for about an hour of getting ready photos which is perfect as most of the girls are done with hair and makeup and we can capture you getting into the dress. Most couples do decide to do a first look but with 8 hours of coverage the timeline is not screwed up if you decide it’s not the right choice for you. That leads us to the ceremony, then an hour and a half to shoot all the family photos, bridal party photos, and your portraits before heading to the reception. Capture all the activities, entrance, first dances, cake, toasts, and all those great drunk dance moves from your guests! Like I said, for the majority of weddings 8 hours of coverage is perfect.

6 Hours or less

If you are not having a grand exit, your ceremony is in the same location as your reception, you decide to do a first look and don't need any getting ready photos you should be just fine with just 5-6 hours of coverage.

Jessica Ryan Blog-5.jpg

What if you book 6 hours and you need more time on your wedding day? I know that during the planning process the wedding can become something entirely different than you thought it would be. The wedding is going to end later and with an exit now! What do you do?? Most photographers will be happy to add an additional hour or two if you need them two. Just ask for their hourly rate!

Need A Wedding Photographer?

Get in touch now for pricing and availability for your wedding day!

5 Things You’ll Learn After You Get Engaged

5 Things You’ll Learn After You Get Engaged

You have been dreaming of the moment your fiance would pop the question so you could start planning the wedding you have dreamed of since you two first meet. Now that you said yes and you have the ring it’s time to start planning your wedding!

I’m Raymond, a wedding photographer right here in Indianapolis.

There are going to be a few surprises you are going to learn while planning a wedding and to save you the pain of finding out on your own, here are 5 tips that will help you prepare so you don’t pull out all of your hair… That was an unintentional rhyme.

Wedding planning can be the worst

Wedding planning isn’t all picking a dress, tasting cakes, and drinking champagne. Sure there are those things and they are fun! But There is also picking table Lenin’s, sticking to a budget, making a seating chart, securing a venue, chasing down RSVPs. Planning a wedding is no easy feat to accomplish. Be prepared for the not so fun stuff.

Your dream wedding will cost more than your first born

Weddings are expensive. There is no doubt about it. Some compromises will have to be made. I’m sure Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had to make some compromises for their wedding. That’s why sitting down in the beginning of wedding planning and talking about what’s important to you both most is so important. Maybe it’s having an outdoor venue in the summer so you can dance the night away, maybe it’s getting an album with your wedding photography so you can relive every moment of your wedding day for years, maybe it’s having a live band over a DJ. Pick what’s most important to your wedding day so know where to look to compromise on the other aspects of your wedding. After all no one will be furious with you if you choose to do a buffet style dinner over a plated meal.

Pinterest will become invaluable

If you have never been married before, why should you be expected to be able to plan a wedding with a thousand moving parts, without a hitch? That’s unrealistic. Pinterest is a hive mind of some of the best wedding planning tips, dos and don'ts, budgeting help, and timeline guides! All free. You can even keep secret boards so your great aunt Karen cant give her unsolicited opinion on your centerpieces. I found for my wife and I’s wedding, doing some fun DIY projects that we found on Pinterest saved us a surprising amount of money and I had a great time doing fun projects with her that I never would have had any idea to do since we had never been married before. I would usually look at Pinterest during my lunch break at work then come home and talk about ideas with my fiancé then we would decide what were just lofty ideas and what we could actually accomplish!

Eloping will sound better and better every day

After just a few weeks of wedding planning you will start to realize why so many couples each year decide to just elope in some beautiful far away tropical land. It requires the only two things you need to get married, an officiant, and a location. Nothing else to worry about. No guest list, no distant relatives demands, no logistical timeline worries. Don’t worry you are not alone. Have that talk with your fiancé. Its normal.

It’s your day. Don’t worry about anyone else.

The sooner you learn this the better. Your wedding isn't just a one time event, It's a coming together of families.  Everyone will give you input about your wedding day even if they are not contributing a dime financially. They will have something to say about the ceremony, the food, wedding favors, the location, the date, the timing, the wedding party, the guest list, the music and of course how much or how little you should be spending. This can be the most stressful aspect of wedding planning. You want everyone to have a great time and enjoy themselves. But you also don’t want to start off your marriage with $150,000 in debt. Remember that this is YOUR wedding day and you have to do what’s right for you.

Know that you are not alone when it comes to planning your wedding. The wedding vendors you choose are not just vendors, they are experts when it comes to weddings. I welcome questions from my couples even if they have nothing to do with their wedding photography. I have worked with hundreds of other local wedding vendors over the years and if you have a question I don’t have the answer too, I bet I know who does have the answer. As a wedding photographer its in my best interest that your happy and stress free on your wedding day because it will shine through in your wedding photos.

Billy Jessica Wedding Slideshow-45.jpg

Need a Wedding Photographer?

Get in touch now for pricing and availability for your wedding day!

How To Pick The Perfect Wedding Date In Indiana

Here you are! You said yes, you have the ring, you have told your family and friends, everyone is excited for you, then you wake up one morning, stop and get a coffee before heading into work when someone asks you “Whens the big day” you realize that you hadn't even thought about it yet! You were still enjoying the excitement of being engaged and now like a ton of bricks you realize you have a lot of work to do! How does one even go about picking their wedding date? Today I'm going to share some tips that will help you pick the perfect date.

1. An Important Date

Many couples look to the calendar to pick a date for their wedding that is significant to them. This is the easiest way to pick your wedding date. But what if you have a lot of important dates together or your significant date falls on a weekday?

2. Where do you want to get married?

For many brides the venue is one of the most important parts of their wedding day and non negotiable. In that case you are at the mercy of the venues availability and if they are a popular venue you may have to wait 2 years for the next available weekend. In that case they just helped you pick your wedding date and have gave you plenty of time to plan the rest of your wedding!

3.Pick the Season

If neither tips above apply to you, take a moment to close your eyes and visualize your wedding day. Really feel it. Imagine walking down the aisle, imagine spending time with your closest family and friends, imagine your first dance together. Did you imagine your wedding inside or outside? Could you feel the warm June sun or the crisp October breeze?

Here in Indiana 46% of weddings take place in early fall between September and November and only 15% of weddings happen in the spring. That could be a huge opportunity to save money as vendors aren't typically as booked up. Remember if you pick spring, pick a date late enough to reduce the risk of being rained out!

4. Consult the local event calendar

Here in Indiana we never have a shortage of fun activities. When planning your wedding and picking your wedding date make sure you check a local event calendar online just to make sure you didn't choose the one day in may when more than 300,000 people flock to indy for the indy 500, booking up every hotel and cramping 465 for the entire day.

BONUS TIP: Don’t Ask everyone for their advice.

This is your wedding, you want to be surrounded by family and friends but if you ask everyone for their availability and their thoughts, you will never pick a wedding date. After you and your fiance sit down and pick a date then just take it to your closest friends and family. Take it to the people you would be devastated if they couldn't make it. This is mainly the those who will be in your bridal party.

Now I didn’t say picking a wedding date would be a breeze or even an easy decision but with these tips I hope you feel more ready than ever to sit down with your partner and pick the date you’re going to remember forever.

Need a Wedding Photographer?

Get in touch now for pricing and availability for your wedding day!

8 Questions to ask your Wedding Photographer to Avoid Getting Ripped Off

Picking a wedding photographer can be a difficult decision and you have to consider more than just whether or not you like the photos on their website. And even though there are some incredible wedding photographers out there, unfortunately it’s easier than ever to buy a camera from costco, take a few photos from a friends wedding and put up a website. So here is a list of questions to ask the potential wedding photographers you meet with to make sure you don’t get ripped off.

1. What happens if our wedding date gets pushed back?

I've seen family emergencies and even venues that accidentally double booked a couple cause a couple to have to push back their wedding date. As much as you don’t anticipate having to move your wedding date, it might happen. Ask your photographer what their policy is if your date has to be moved so you are better prepared.

Molly Christian Slideshow-49.jpg
 

2. What will be delivered to me

Some photographers will just send you a link to view your photos online after your wedding. Others will hand wrap a USB drive or prints and mail them to you with an album. Talk to your fiance about what you want from your wedding photography after the wedding so you can make sure you pick a wedding photographer who will deliver what you're looking for!

3. Can we print our photos?

This may seem like a crazy questions but there are some photographers whos business model is to shoot your wedding for cheap and try to make the majority of their money on the back end through prints and therefore don’t allow you the print rights allowing you to print whichever photos you chose. Ask your photographer if the print rights are included, allowing you to print your own photos.

4. What is the turnaround time on wedding photos?

I’m sure you have heard horror stories of brides having to wait 4, 5, 6 months or more for their wedding photos. This happens more often than not. Even if your photographer promises that you will have your wedding photos in a timely manner, ask for a delivery date to be listed in the contract to protect you.

Casey Cory Slideshow-104.jpg

5. Can we pick or can you help us pick a location for our engagement photos?

The last thing you want is to book the perfect photographer only to find they only shoot engagements in 2 or 3 different places without charging some sort of fee. If you have an idea of where you want your engagement photos feel free to ask your photographer if they will be open to your suggestions. On the other end you may have no idea where you want to take your engagement photos and would welcome any suggestions from the photographers expertise.

6. What happens if we don’t like our engagement photos?

It’s entirely possible you could look through a photographers entire portfolio, fall in love with their work and hire them for your wedding only to find that when it’s time for your engagement photos you aren't happy with the results. This is rare, sure but entirely possible. You don’t want to be stuck with your photographer if you discover they can’t deliver what you want from your engagements and wedding photos. Ask the photographer what would happen if you found yourself in that situation.

7. What happens if your camera dies while I’m walking down the aisle?

Your Wedding day is once in a lifetime, and walking down the aisle is a pretty important moment. If your photographers camera decides to die right then and there… you need to know what your photographer is going to do. Although it would be a bummer to have a camera die a professional should have backup equipment to be able to keep going no matter what happens.

Tyler Ashley Slideshow-50.jpg

8. Have you ever had to make a claim on your business Insurance for an incident that has happened at a wedding?

Any professional will have liability insurance. A plumber, a bank, a doctor, and also so should your photographer. Ask them if they have ever had to file a claim from something that happened at a wedding. Often times at weddings there is alcohol and great dance moves, sometimes mistakes happen. Ask the photographer you’re interviewing what would happen if an accident were to happen.

Asking any potential wedding photographer that you interview these questions will give you a great idea of what to expect and give you a good idea of their personality so you don’t get ripped off!

Need a Wedding Photographer?

Get in touch now for pricing and availability for your wedding day!