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St. Louis Wedding Photographer Selection Process

We finally picked a photographer out of the incredibly saturated market in St. Louis.  I must confess that Justin and I didn’t do a whole lot of searching ourselves.  Like many things so far, wonderful things are falling into our laps. A couple nights we sat on the couch and looked at multiple websites and made a brief spreadsheet of the web pages we liked. Then we sat on that for about a month or two.  In the mean time a wonderfully talented photographer found Justin on twitter and subsequently browsed our blog.  Of course, our first plan of action was to look at his website.  After looking at websites repeatedly, we became photographer website snobs. 

Each new website would have a cheesy sappy romantic song playing in the background. Out of habit, before even entering the sites, we immediately looked for the mute button. Therefore, any website that didn’t play music seemed to be unfairly preferred.  Another annoyance was when each thumbnail or picture took longer to load than a snail crossing a street.  A tip to all photographers . . . websites that immediately load the full size picture after you running the mouse over the thumbnails are so much better to browse. Having to click each individual picture gets monotonous.

stoicAfter looking at so many websites a divide in quality started to happen between each photographer’s work.  It starts to feel like there is no middle of the road photographer.  You either go big or just bring your own camera that sits in your purse everyday and pull it out for some photos on your wedding day.

So, when Jonathon Pollack started contacting us and promoting his work to us, I was relieved.  His work was really good, and his website was excellent . . . and he found us.  With no resistance we began to give him serious consideration.  We returned to our spreadsheet we made a couple months prior, to see how he compared to those we thought we liked previously.  This is when his work really stood out, and not to mention his reasonable price.  You have to admit, when the price goes down your interest goes up.  You know you can’t pass up a clearance aisle because there might be something you didn’t know you needed.point

Luckily in our favor, Jonathon Pollack, is way better than the smashed bag of chips on clearance.  Not too long after reevaluating our spreadsheet, Jonathon contacted Justin again and offered to give us a FREE 30 minutes engagement session.  Justin and I weren’t planning on an engagement session . . . we didn’t think it was necessary.  But since it was offered and it would give us a chance to see what we would look like in pictures instead of strangers, we accepted. We were also excited to see what it was like to work with Jonathon. 

Needless to say, the experience was exceptional.  Jonathon and his wife created a relaxed fun atmosphere that we were pleased to take part in.  The pictures turned out great. The chemistry was perfect. The price was right.  We have a photographer!

 

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A Note About Wedding Sponsors

I’m sure you’ve noticed the advertisements on this blog. We’ve got a Google ad at the top of each post and an Amazon widget on the sidebar, which  should be more relevant going forward. I do hope that these ads don’t detract from your experience on our blog. Many a good site has been ruined by overzealous monitization. That being said, Lindsey and I are hoping to make a little money off of this blog to go towards paying our wedding. In addition to the ads we’ll be adding an occaisional sponsored post soon. These posts will be clearly designated as sponsored. If the idea of a sponsored post doesn’t sit well with you, then please ignore it. However, I’m only going to post about wedding related things on this blog. There will be no posts about lawn mowers or sexual disfunction pills on this blog. This site is about planning a wedding, getting maried, and starting a life with your partner. It will stay that way. I promise.

I’m also going to add an Amazon store page to the site. Should be pretty cool. That store will be on its own page and have its own vibe. If you are a regular reader of this site, and like shopping at Amazon, start your search at that store when it is up!

If you guys know of any other wedding blogs that have monitized in a good way, please let me know. I love to see good examples of profitable blogs that are still in the spirit of an honest, meaningful conversation.

One thing I can promise you is that Lindsey and I aren’t going to sell out our wedding for sponsors. I apologize ahead of time if this offends anyone, but I feel having an actual wedding sponsored is pretty tacky. If you’ve done a sponsored wedding yourself, or have been to one, and it was pulled off properly, please share the story.

History of Wedding Traditions

Lindsey and I are going to meld some traditional stuff as well as some new stuff at our wedding. It’s going to be pretty cool for those involved, as well as the guests. However, when deciding exactly what traditions I want to keep I found it best to look up the origins of that tradition. I found some cool stuff. In fact, I started looking at other wedding traditions not planned for our ceremony.

I bet you can see where this is heading. If you said, “A top five list?” then you, my dearest reader, are correct!

Five Famous Wedding Traditions & The Story Behind Them

  1. “Here Comes the Bride,” also known as “The Bridal Chorus” – This tune comes from an opera written by Wagner called “Lohengrin” that he wrote in the mid 1800s. According to my little Internet search on the history of “Here Comes the Bride”, the scene in Lohengrin that features the song is all sexy and steamy. Awesome.
  2. The reason behind the wedding party – This is kind of cool. Back in the day, groomsmen were used as body guards for the bride or to fend off the angry mob of disapproving future in laws. Bridesmaids, unsurprisingly, were traditionally there to cater to the bride’s every need.
  3. Why do brides wear veils? – The history of the bridal veil is rooted in religious traditions of disguising the bride from evil spirits. However, if one really wants to protect themselves from an evil spirit looking for a bride, won’t the white dress and attention give her away? I guess these spirits are easier to fool than we thought.
  4. Why is it called a “honeymoon?” – According to the Interwebs, we call it a honeymoon because the first month of marriage is the sweetest. That’s kind of a glass half empty way of looking at it if you ask me…
  5. The history of the garter toss – This is a good one. According to Snopes.com, the garter toss signified the public display of a man taking his woman as his possession and announced to the world that she was indeed his property.

If you have some extra time, then I encourage you to Google search any of the common wedding traditions to find out the crazy stories of their origins.