If you know Ben and I, you know we don’t have any money. He’s a writer and I’m a photographer. Low salaries are the price we pay for having jobs we really love. So I knew from the start that I’d be a budget bride and need to cut corners to save for the details I really want.
What we cut:
The ceremony
All brides cut the cake. I cut the ceremony. Neither of us are religious, so we weren't going to have a church or temple ceremony. We thought about using a city or state park, but Ben and I ultimately decided that it's more up our alley to go to Borough Hall and get the papers ($35 for the marriage license and $25 for the marriage ceremony).
The DJ
I like music as much as the next person, but nixing the DJ wasn't a difficult decision to make. With an iTunes playlist and an iPod, I'll be able to put together a soundtrack of my favorite songs for free.
Save the Dates
Save the dates can be cute, but in a world where written correspondence is increasingly rare, they seemed unnecessary. By sending out our invites so early -- and not telling anyone about our engagement beforehand -- our wedding invitations pretty much served double billing as save the dates.
The Engagement Ring
Yep. We didn’t get an engagement ring. Ben and I are clearly working on a tight budget, but he was willing to spring for a ring if I chose one. I looked around at all the standard places. It goes without saying that they were all really expensive! There’s a saying floating around that an engagement ring should cost two months salary. If that’s the case, I’d much rather have a Canon 5D Mark II, which would pay for itself after a few shoots. Not to mention, after the ring, we still have a wedding to pay for! But ultimately, expensive or not, I couldn’t find one that I liked. The traditional solitaire diamond just doesn’t speak to me and I wasn’t excited about the more contemporary designs either. So we decided to go spartan. Wedding bands only.
And this is just the beginning. Considering our bare-bones budget, the cuts are just getting started!
March 3, 2011
February 17, 2011
all about the wedding invitations
I'm not really into scalloped edges, frills and vellum paper, so when it came to designing my own wedding invitations, I decided to start with something I really love. The main inspiration for my invites is a Henri Cartier-Bresson's Scrapbook, a photobook that both Ben and I both enjoy. A contact sheet, however, is not much of a wedding invitation.
The internet is so handy when it comes to looking for wedding inspiration! After a quick peek at a couple of my favorite wedding sites (oh so beautiful paper is a great place to gawk at invite gorgeousness!), I realized that old postcards and vintage stamps would be perfect additions to the invitations. I ordered the stamps on eBay for close to it's face value (th key is to buy them in sheets) and bought the New York-themed postcards from the Brooklyn Flea. The best part about using vintage postcards as the rsvp response cards is that I get to keep them after our guests mail them back! I’ll soon have a Walker Evans-style collection!
To save money, I also wanted to go diy on addressing the envelopes. I'm very bad at calligraphy, so it's a good thing that Ben has an old typewriter. We cleaned it and bought a new ribbon from a local stationary store. Definitely call first to see if the stores carry typewriter ribbon. The first few typewriter repair and supply shops I dialed are all closed!
February 15, 2011
sue and charles engagement shoot
It's been a super snowy winter here in New York City. So to stay warm, Sue and Charles had the brilliant idea of having their engagement photos taken at the MTA Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn. I'd never been there before, but oh boy, was it awesome! I had so much fun taking pictures of Sue and Charles as we wandered through the old train cars. Thank you Sue and Charles for taking me to the museum!
more photos on facebook!
February 10, 2011
I’m getting married!
After six years of dating, Ben and I have decided to get married. Yay!
We made the decision and talked to our families around the new year. But we thought it’d be funny if we didn't announce our engagement to our friends — and instead surprised to them with the news when they received the wedding invitations in the mail.
Are we the first people ever to do this? Is it considered bad manners?
We had second thoughts many times over. Sometimes it was just downright difficult not to blurt out the good news. But we finally mailed out the invites last week, so now everything’s out in the open!
Obviously, I’m really excited about this! Considering my job, this puts me in a really interesting position. As a 24-year-old wedding photographer, I’ve probably been to more weddings than most people my age. And I think about weddings all the time — it’s how I make my living. But planning for my own is a whole other beast.
Since many readers of this blog are future brides, I figured I’d detail my own experiences as a client. Hopefully my grand ideas and huge mistakes will help other Brooklyn brides find great deals on locally sourced wedding rings, food, and even photography!
I’ll be posting here, on facebook and on twitter. Please follow if you’d like! This is a really exciting time and I hope to hear all your feedback and ideas!
February 1, 2011
January 3, 2011
December 17, 2010
December 13, 2010
joyce and jens
I recently did a couples shoot in DUMBO with models from model mayhem. With the sun setting so early in these winter months, it turned out to be mostly a night shoot.
December 8, 2010
November 24, 2010
November 19, 2010
Jacqueline and Howard engagement shoot sneak peek!
My dear friends Jacqueline and Howard are getting married! Here's a kiss from their engagement shoot in Tribeca. Pictures are coming soon!
November 18, 2010
catching sunset in battery park
The weather was gorgeous last weekend, it was 60 and sunny the entire time! On Sunday afternoon (yes, afternoon, sunset was at 4:30pm) I had a family photoshoot with Colin, Louise and their cute as a button son, Chatham. They were a blast to photograph! The sunset was very photogenic as well. I couldn't think of a finer way to cap off the beautiful weekend.
November 5, 2010
shooting with the olympus pen ee for a day
I try to get the most out of my film, literally. When I load a camera, I pull out as little leader as possible in an attempt to eek out 42 pictures from a “36-shot” roll. So when I saw that the Levi’s Workshop was loaning out an Olympus Pen EE — a camera that turns 36-shot rolls into 72-shot rolls — I knew I had to take it out for a test.
I borrowed the camera Saturday night. Levi’s loans out the cameras for 24-hour periods, so I had to shoot 72 exposures before closing time on Sunday. I thought it would be a challenge for me to fire off so many shots, but the Pen EE is such an incredibly efficient camera that it was a breeze.
It has a fixed lens, a fixed focus, a fixed shutter speed, and a selenium cell around the lens for automatic aperture adjustment. Really, all I had to do was point and shoot!
For the most part, the shots were evenly exposed, even in some pretty tricky lighting situations. There’s an internal mechanism that prevents the shutter from firing when there’s not enough light, so I didn’t have to stress underexposure. I also didn’t need to spend time focusing. Since I wasn’t exactly how far the minimum focusing distance was, I only shot subjects that were more than a few feet away. Everything turned out to be in focus!
The Pen EE is very small and weighs nothing. I had it dangling from my wrist by the strap and wore it like a bracelet for most of the day. Other times, I stowed it in my pocket.
Because the frames are split down the middle, holding the camera normally produces vertical images. That’s actually a really cool quirk that really challenged me to seek out vertical compositions (though turning the camera vertical gets horizontals).
The half-frames produce ready-made diptychs — which was also a lot of fun. It got me thinking about taking back-to-back shots that look good next to each other.
Considering that the Pen EE’s negatives are half the size of normal 35mm images, this isn’t a camera I’d use if I was planning on making large prints. But it’s awesome for small prints and Flickr-ing, and bringing along on photo safaris.
It’s a totally fun camera!
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