Photographer Peril

On Monday, I received a phone call from our best photographer option. She received my e-mail with my questions and wants and also said they posted photos from Tensing Pen on their blog behind a password. She asked if I had any other questions and apologized for taking so long to get back to me. I was ELATED. She said I will receive an e-mail with a password and pricing for all of the elements I asked for. PROGRESS - so I thought. It is now Sunday and I haven't heard anything. I've been away all week at a conference with no time to call or e-mail. I have to say once again I'm more than disappointed in their customer service...

Other ways to capture our wedding weekend

I've written about our photographer/videographer situation and nothing has changed in that department unfortunately but from the beginning I also wanted to find an easy way to capture the photos from our guests in one easy place we can all upload and download from. We have some seriously talented friends and there is no way we can have a pro at every event all weekend long.

I first thought about Flickr but that requires an account so it's not quite ideal. Early on I came across Wedding Turtle. They allow you to create a unique url and e-mail address. Guests can upload or email their photos as attachements and they all appear on the website. We can categorize and organize all of the guest photos as well. They even send you cards to tell your guests about the service! So far this is the frontrunner for the photo aspect of the weekend.

A few days ago, I also came across WedIt. They send you 5 HD cameras to give to guests and then you send them back and they edit the footage into a wedding video to a song of your choice. That would be a perfect way to capture all of the special moments from the entire weekend. The sample videos are absolutely adorable. When I started looking at the price though, I realized that the video cameras are WAYY cheaper than what they charge. So Ben and I decided we'll just buy 5-6 HD flip cameras so our guests can pass them around all weekend and then we'll take them home and edit them. Ben is seriously amazing at these things (he made a great videos from Langerado music festival, our clearwater beach vacation, and animal enrichment at the zoo). So now the goal is to find these cameras for under $100. We figure we can resell them after the wedding and will probably only end up costing us about $50 for camera. Our amazing friends will be great videographers. We also get to see EVERY SINGLE minute those cameras catch and relive it all.

We're still going to enlist a photographer and videographer to capture the ceremony and usual elements of the reception but also want to capture moments from the entire weekend. We're very excited about these & this way hopefully no unflattering photos of me will end up on Facebook!

So listen up wedding guests - we're counting on you!

Officially Officiating

Because we are already legally married, we don't have any of those pesky legal requirements to meet when we have our wedding ceremony. The most glaring of those requirements is the person that marries you. (There actually are some wording requirements as well as that piece of paper.) Now we don't have to have a complete stranger marry us, anyone can! As soon as we realized this we put our heads together to identify the perfect person. We wanted someone that has known both of us for as long as possible (obviously) and was married. We wanted someone who has gone through this and knows how it feels to commit to someone else for life.

First, we thought of our parents - they've known one of us since birth and the other from very early on in our relationship. However, we thought this may be unfair. Only one parent can have that privilege of marrying us. So we decided we could honor and highlight our parents in other ways (another post for another day).

With our parents out of the running we looked to our guest list to our married friends. There actually aren't that many of them (we are the first of our group of college friends - except him - to get married) so it became quite clear. Our dearest friend Kevin!

Kevin and I in Feb 2009

Kevin at his rehearsal dinner June 2011

Kevin, Rachel (his wifey), and his family at his rehearsal dinner June 2011

Now comes the fun part of writing our own ceremony. I've found some elements that I do like, for example a ring warming ceremony & a wine box ceremony, but for the most part I have no idea what this is going to look like. Luckily, we have a while to work together to create the perfect ceremony for us.

Congrats Erin & Jon!

Somewhere in San Francisco, my best friend got engaged last night! They have been together as long as Ben and I have and he is a great man! Erin and I have known each other since freshman year of high school and I'm not going to embarrass us both by posting pictures of our friendship but here's the beautiful couple during their trip to NYC last summer. Congrats you guys I love you both!

Photographer Peril

Once we had a venue, next on my list was to book our other big vendors - photography & videography. Tensing Pen requires that we use their preferred vendors and the coordinator quickly sent me 2. After checking out both of their websites, I had a favorite but decided to e-mail both for information. The runner-up was unavailable and sent me the information for one of their associates that was and I was NOT impressed with his photography. So my decision should be easy right?!? WRONG!

When I first contacted our favorite photographer they were available, had reasonable prices, and mentioned that they were shooting 2 weddings at Tensing Pen in the coming weeks and would send me a link to the photos when they were done. GREAT! This was back in June. Come July, still nothing so I e-mailed to check-in. A little while later I get a reply that they are still being edited but should be up soon. A couple of weeks go by and still nothing. This time I'm told that the couples didn't want their photos posted on the blog but some of them would be posted on a private site and a password would be sent to me by the end of the week. Well it is now September and I haven't seen any photos from Tensing Pen like I was told I would.

At this point I decided to e-mail Tensing Pen's coordinator about our situation. She immediately followed up with both photographers. Runner-up claimed to have never heard from us and the favorites just told her to remind me that not all couples want to share their photos but they were still working on photos done at Tensing Pen. I thanked the coordinator and set her straight about our runner-up contacting us and giving us an associate that we were NOT thrilled with. I e-mailed the favorite for more detailed information about the packages to see if they can accomplish what we (I) want.

It costs $500 to book a vendor outside of Tensing Pen. If I start doing research now and contacting new photographers on Jamaica I'l run into plenty that aren't available on our date. Flying in photographers from elsewhere is out of the question because of budget. I'm close to booking the favorite because I'm afraid I'll end up without a photographer if I don't book soon. Their work on their website and blog is beautiful and they offer a trash the dress session. So what would you do?

My Cousin's Wedding

We just returned from a quick trip to Arkansas during the long weekend to attend my cousin's beautiful wedding. They planned a beautiful wedding at the Stables on the Hill and definitely took advantage of the beauty of Northwest Arkansas. Here's a few of our photos from the evening!

The Stables at Sunset

The couple during their vows

Husband & Wife!

Seasonal flowers were on the tables, in the bouquets, and boutonnieres

The sun was setting and the party was starting

Destination Details

So now that I've started really planning this shindig called a wedding I wanted to share some details that we needed to consider before we could get the ball rolling.

One of the biggest considerations was the time of the year. The first question after we announced our engagement was when. The first thing that comes to mind when you mention the tropics, at least for me and my family, is hurricane season. Hurricane season runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. We are actually entering the height of the season right now.

photo courtesy of Hurricane Science

Throughout the season there is a fairly predictable pattern of where storms form and move. Adding to that is the heat, while I'm from Florida and have been to the Caribbean in August with no problem, our guests may not appreciate that so that eliminated all of the summer between these two factors. I HATE the fall and winter now because I HATE cold weather. While fall does have some beautiful days, I find it hard to enjoy them because I know they are coming to an end.

Photo from Sodahead.com

So obviously, we wanted to have a spring wedding. Done right? WRONG!

The spring in the Caribbean screams SPRING BREAK!

Photo from beachbelievers.com

The last thing I want around my wedding a bunch of drunk college kids. (Not that we're all going to be totally sober the entire weekend or anything, but that's different). Fortunately, after spring break season (after Easter-ish) it becomes the 'low season' for most of the resorts. Low season = cheaper prices. Our resort is almost half the price of the high season in the low season. We also wanted to avoid May because Ben's little sister is a senior in high school and needs to be home for AP tests, prom, and graduation. We were quickly running out of weekends!

Image from just allcalendar.org

I narrowed it down to the last 3 weeks of April. When we found our resorts the last 2 happened to fall in the low season so we picked April 21 and sent in our request. I received a prompt reply that it was booked as well as the following weekend but the previous weekend was open. Only hitch - Sunday April 15 was the beginning of low season. I was deadset on getting married on the weekend to minimize the time I was asking our family and friends to miss work to be with us so I went out on a limb and asked if we could secure low season pricing for our guests. After a few days of waiting (it felt like an eternity because I was busy showing off the resort to anyone who would listen), the manager agreed! YAY! We quickly sent them our deposit and had our wedding date of April 14, 2012. We were required by contract to have our guests stay for 3 nights so we will all be in Jamaica together April 13-16!

For most couples planning a wedding transportation includes limos, buses, etc to transport themselves from to and from the venues and maybe their guests if need be. We didn't have to worry about that but we were asking our guests to travel over 1500 miles to join us. I have the ladies of weddingbee to thank for explaining the process of getting flight discounts for their guests at their destination weddings. I quickly e-mailed the 3 major carriers that we fly when we visit family - American, United, and Delta - about securing a discount. Delta never e-mailed me back (SHAME!), United required everyone to purchase their tickets as a group, way ahead of time and NO cheaper than the searches I was turning up in Orbitz, but American happily supplied us with a code for our guests flying from ANY city to Jamaica. It's only 5% but its something. So far my parents are the only ones who have booked flights and didn't use it but hopefully someone will be able to take advantage of it.

We now also have several days to fill with our guests. We're not only planning our wedding and reception but events on Friday, Sunday, and Monday for them as well. Luckily, we're pretty much taking over this boutique resort so it will be easy for us to just relax together around the property. We're also working with our resort to plan an excursion off the property for Sunday. Even if it's just to the beach, where we can explore, it will be something to do that our guests don't have to think about. My goal is to give our guests as little to think about and plenty of things to do once they land in Jamaica.