Dream Dress but Dodgy Wedding Photos?

~Only the best pho­tog­ra­phy is used in this blog fea­ture! All images are from wed­dings pub­lished on the Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog~

A recent sur­vey* has found that over 51% of brides stated that the most impor­tant ele­ment of their wed­ding day was their dress – show­ing that how a girl looks on her spe­cial day is her num­ber one priority.

How­ever, are brides at risk of look­ing great on the day but stow­ing their dodgy wed­ding album away with the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions or under the bed?

The research under­taken through Sur­vey Mon­key with over hun­dred brides across the UK high­lights that while a girl’s fairy­tale day cen­tres on her dress she and her hus­band to be may not have the mem­o­ries they dream of as many are choos­ing to forgo the pro­fes­sional pho­tos and call­ing on friends and fam­ily to take pic­tures of their spe­cial day.

With 15% of the brides sur­veyed spend­ing noth­ing on pho­tog­ra­phy and a fur­ther 25% spend­ing under £500 there is real con­cern that cou­ples are run­ning the risk of being dis­ap­pointed at not hav­ing the kind of wed­ding day pho­to­graph that they had dreamed of.

Recent bride Jen Hard­ing from Swansea said: “I couldn’t believe that so many brides were risk­ing not hav­ing beau­ti­ful mem­o­ries of their wed­ding day. I cer­tainly wanted to look lovely and have a beau­ti­ful dress but that all seems point­less if you have pic­tures with people’s heads miss­ing or put all that pres­sure on a friend.”

Tellingly the sur­vey also high­lighted that when brides were asked what one piece of advice they would give to a newly engaged cou­ple the biggest response (over 25%) was that they would advise spend­ing more money on using a pro­fes­sional wed­ding photographer.

Stephen Lewis said: “The aver­age spend on a wed­ding was reported to be approx­i­mately £10,000 — £15,000 yet cou­ples were spend­ing less than 10% of that on the last­ing mem­o­ries. Way after the cham­pagne corks have popped and you grow old together most peo­ple trea­sure hav­ing mem­o­ries of your day, beau­ti­fully frozen in time.”

*106 brides sur­veyed, sum­mer 2013, using Sur­vey Monkey.

Stephen Lewis is an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher from South Wales. Born in the Rhondda Val­ley he is avail­able for com­mis­sions through­out Wales and the South West, Cardiff, Swansea, Bris­tol, Glouces­ter­shire, Wilt­shire and Somerset.

More infor­ma­tion: www.weddingphotographersouthwales.org.uk.

If you need any more con­vinc­ing, then this arti­cle comes very highly rec­om­mended… How inter­est­ing are your wed­ding photos?

So what do you think? My per­sonal top tip would be to place as much impor­tance in your wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher as you are in choos­ing your other key sup­pli­ers — your venue, dress and gen­eral styling of your day. If any of these are impor­tant then so are the mem­o­ries you’ll cher­ish in 20, 30, and 50 years’ time.

Claire x