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We want to help you out!
Planning a wedding can be overwhelming and stressful.
Here are our posts addressing different parts of the journey consolidated in one place and framed as potential questions you might have:
We hope this is helpful for us and, as always, feel free to reach out anytime :)
Or any colour for that matter! <3
We regularly discover new, beautiful wedding venues in our travels for inspiration. We decided to make it easy and collate it all in one spot. As we find (new-to-us) venues, we will add them below. If you know of any that should be on this list, please feel free to reach out. If there are any that should not be on the list (assume that if they are below, we are unaware of any inherent racism, ageism, or discrimination of any form that might be known to local vendors/businesses; again, feel free to reach out to us and let us know). We are most familiar with the venues in our local area - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia - and so the majority of venues listed will probably be concentrated around this area. Enjoy the following 100+ venues!
Australia
Queensland
Brisbane & Surrounds
QUT Wedding Collection (Old Government House, in particular)
Sunshine Coast & Surrounds
Gold Coast & Surrounds
Kooroomba Vineyards & Lavender Farm
Elsewhere
New South Wales
Victoria
Tasmania
South Australia
Western Australia
Northern Territory
Bahamas
Finland
France
French Polynesia
Hawaii
Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Morocco
Mexico
New Zealand
Switzerland
Historisches Alpinhotel Grimsel Hospiz
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States of America
Vanuatu
Narrowing down the options when choosing a wedding photographer is typically multifaceted. You want to love the photographer's work. You want a personality that "gets" you as individuals and as a couple (put simply, you want someone relatable!). You need to be able to afford them. With this in mind, some of the most important reasons for why we blog regularly (FYI: we blog once a week and this is our 128th post) are:
to tangibly demonstrate how passionate we are about our role as wedding photographers
to show who we are and what this means to you as our client
to share tips and ideas
Essentially, the kind of information that we are hoping will be important during your decision-making process. Today, we are sharing a little more about us & some food for thought for our clients. A recent discussion about some of our most memorable & personal images to date was the catalyst.
We work really hard on perfecting our craft. We focus a lot of attention on people skills, composition, chasing the most ideal light, depth of field... have we lost you yet? ;) We decided to strip all that back during our discussions and we challenged each other to think of our personal favourite images (rule time: we could only pick a maximum of 2 images). Of course, we both gravitated to ones that have all three of us in them. However, we currently do not share images of our daughter, Chloe, online. So, we started again. Naturally, our minds drifted to favourite shots of the two of us - mostly taken during travels. With that in mind (and as the exercise was beginning to feel too easy!), we narrowed the criteria down even further: Pete had to choose two images that featured only him, and I had to choose two that only featured me.
{Try this for yourself! You might surprise yourself with what you end up choosing. Actually, why don’t you stop reading now and pick out your two all-time favourites. We’ll come back to yours in a moment.}
In the end, Pete settled on one image. He felt that this one summed up everything for him:
I chose two as they are from a similar time period (same year) but during very different experiences and I find the polarity striking:
Interestingly, all three are “okay” images (definitely not terrible). However, are they perfectly composed? Was the lighting nailed? Honestly, does it even matter? All three tell a story that is important to the subject. Pete chose his representative image for a range of reasons. Skydiving was a dream come true. He was proud of himself for taking the risk. Pete experienced freedom that comes with… well, jumping out of a plane with all risks carefully calculated. I chose my graduation image as I was (and am) so proud of this achievement. It is something that was the result of hard work & dedication. I chose the one from my first time experiencing snow. This moment features in one of the top 10 days of my life to date. Experiencing snowfall was (in my case, anyway) a magical moment. I don’t usually take selfies, but this was a moment I wanted to freeze forever - literally.
When you selected your two images, did you think anything along these lines, “I really like x one, but I can’t possibly keep it! If I took it again, I would make sure I was a little more off-centre. If it followed the rule of thirds, I think I would be more inclined to keep it”… “Hmmm, this is a good one but the shadows on my face are too pronounced. I think I will scrap it. Shame really as it always makes me feel happy when I look at it!”… “Oooops - the highlights are blown! Forget it! …
Correct me if I am wrong but I am guessing that you chose based on how looking at those images makes you feel?
In conclusion, we wanted to take this opportunity to re-frame the importance of capturing the moments that are important to you. Yes, we will strive for perfect composition, image processing, lighting, timing, & storytelling. However, we will not compromise storytelling & capturing raw emotion at the expense of perfection. We want the resulting images to tell your story; not be representative of our “brand” per se. We want you to love your wedding photography for a lifetime.
Pete & Em. We have already introduced ourselves here. We have shared our priorities in blog posts regularly (such as this one). However, there is a little more about us that might be of interest to our clients.
From our wedding by Lady Jayde Photography; the parent life means that we don’t often get shots of just the two of us these days ;)
Our personalities.
We are very different. Pete is the extrovert; Em is the introvert. Pete is driven by logic; Em is driven by emotion. Pete embraces posing & taking the time to set up the perfect shot. Em embraces photojournalism & allowing the moments to unfold. Pete enjoys interacting with people & helping them to relax in front of the camera (sometimes Dad Jokes play a role; after all, Pete does get a lot of practice with little Chloe). Em enjoys making sure the raw emotion & details of the day are captured. Pete works best with lists and makes sure that our shooting follows the plan. Em goes with the flow and works best in the background. Opposites attract.
We celebrate our personality differences (as well as our individual interests and “eye”). We play to our individual strengths. I guess you could say that our personalities and different strengths are some of our unique selling points. When you choose Poppy & Sage Photography, you sign up for your story to be told two different ways. We look forward to working together to capture Your Day. Feel free to contact us here:
Wedding Budgeting. Two words that are almost certainly guaranteed to induce tachycardia in brides & grooms the world over. Where do you start?!
Figure out your priorities and budget accordingly.
Is it the dress? Is it car hire? Is it the honeymoon? Only you two as a couple can figure out what should be at the top of this list.
Of course we are biased. ;) We could regale you with all of our personal reasons for why professional photography should be somewhere in the top 3-ish, but we will limit ourselves to just a few (please do not think that any mention of other vendors serves to minimise their contribution to the day - all vendors are equally important!):
You will have your wedding images/album long after you have devoured the last remaining slice of frozen wedding cake or sold off the (now) dust-collecting decorations; in other words, you will have a lifetime of tangible memories.
Who you choose - Uncle Bob or a professional - has a huge bearing on how those tangible memories are translated. As a general rule, price is proportional to talent &/or experience. As we stated previously, “A great photographer will make an ‘average’ wedding look stunning. A bad photographer will make a stunning wedding look average... or worse”. Cheap does not necessarily mean value-for-money.
Simply put: if you are going to spend months & months planning such an important day in your life, you may as well record it.
Plan for the event that the budget could be blown due to unforeseen costs.
We have listed the cost of photography with us on our website. If the numbers line up with how your budget looks, we’re happy to meet up and have a chat in person. The next step is to see if we’re a good fit personality-wise. Feel free to contact us here: