So we’ve already discussed what wedding photographers are in our article Wedding Photographers and What They Provide. We talked about all of the different industries in which photographers work, and compared wedding photographers to all other photographers. We discussed all of the different products and services many of them offer, and even the variations among them. However, we have not yet discussed prices.

When it comes to typical prices and fee schedules, most photographers in this industry stay within certain boundaries. You will see fee schedules and prices that surprise you, some that are incredibly low, and some that are incredibly high, but most stay right in the middle. Just like any other industry, there are different levels of pricing to match the different needs of brides searching for a wedding photographer.

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This seems like such an obvious question. Everyone knows what a photographer is, right? He or she typically takes pictures of interesting stuff for a hobby or profession. So a wedding photographer obviously takes pictures of weddings. But what’s the difference between a regular photographer and a wedding photographer? Now that’s a great question!

A photographer can do a variety of different jobs. The can photograph for fun or even for money. They could work for a business or company in just about any industry, like fashion, the news, commercial, science, sales, marketing, advertising, industry, and sales. Some photographers even work freelance, which means that they work on their own, and choose from numerous topics to photograph. Some of these might be children, pregnancy, portraits, still life, cities, landscapes, weddings, stock photography, etc. And the fee schedules and photography prices range widely depending on industry and topic.

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When you think of weddings, topics like wedding cakes, wedding dresses, engagement rings, and the like come up. I know I think white organza, lace, beautiful flowers, tuxedos, and a couple desperately in love.

Weddings should be about love and romance, spending your life together and starting a family, but thanks to many of the television shows, new wedding trends, and higher wedding costs and expectations, this ideal is quickly dwindling.

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Family members and the bride are not the only ones who can cause problems at a wedding. Wedding party members are in the same boat when it comes to etiquette and simple respect when it comes to someone else’s special day.I have planned weddings for about eight years now and have seen a great deal of weddings, including their myriad of interesting and unique problems.

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1. Not setting a realistic budget.
 
How to avoid it:   Issues dealing with money usually cause more stress than anything else in the planning process. One of the most important things you can do in planning a wedding is to set a REALISTIC budget and stick with it. Many brides get so stressed out over the cost of the wedding that they lose sight of the joy and happiness of the time. Don’t let money put a damper on what should be one of the enjoyable experiences in your life. Set a budget and follow it.

2. Asking all of your friends to be in the wedding the minute you get engaged.
 
How to avoid it:   You shouldn’t ask anyone to be in your wedding party more than six months prior to the wedding. Set your budget first, then determine the number of attendants (bridesmaids/groomsman) you ask according to your budget. If someone gets offended or feels left out, think of other special ways you can have them involved, such as reciting a scripture or reading during the ceremony, or keeping up with the guestbook.

3. Skimping on the food.
 
How to avoid it:   Work with your caterer in advance to set a menu that is within your budget but still allows you to have plenty of food for everyone. You shouldn’t add filet mignon to the menu if it means you’ll have a limited portion. Food is one place where it’s best not to cut corners. Instead, try saving money in other areas, such as trimming down the guest list, or having your wedding on a Sunday (since it’s usually cheaper than Saturdays).

4. Having a friend as your photographer.
 
How to avoid it:   It’s usually best to just go ahead and hire a professional. Your wedding is one of the most important days of your life. The last thing you want is to look back at blurry pictures or pictures of random objects, including the floor, the inside of the lens cap, or Aunt Millie’s rear end. Most professionals offer many different packages at different price points. Start looking for one early so you have plenty of time to find the right photographer for your budget.

5. Not creating a gift registry.
 
How to avoid it:   No one wants to come out of a wedding with a pile of random gift items that in no way match anything in your house. So just register! It’s a fun activity you and your fiance can do together to take a break from all that wedding planning. Plus, who says you can only register for silverware and china? Throw in that DVD set you’ve been wanting, or a Wii game the two of you have been wanting to have. Make it fun! That way, you’ll receive gifts you actually love and not random items that will sit in your attic until the next garage sale.

6. Starting your hair and makeup too late.
 
How to avoid it:   Sure, you don’t want your ‘do' to fall before you walk down the aisle, but stylists will likely get to you late if you’re the last one to be done. Instead, schedule yourself in the middle of your attendants. That way, it’s not a big deal if a bridesmaid has to switch to quicker, less complicated hairstyle if the stylist is pressed for time. That is not an option for you.

7. Losing your sense of humor.
 
How to avoid it:   Don’t forget to smile! If you stay tense and nervous, it could pass right on by without you getting a chance to enjoy it. Just relax and have a great time. After all, it is your wedding day!

As you can see by our new colors and company name, we are currently making some big changes.

We have been under a huge company restructuring for the last year. Instead of focusing specifically on weddings, we are adding additional specializations like parenting, cooking, gardening, and taking care of your home.

At the moment, I strive daily to help couples all over the country have their perfect wedding for pennies on the dollar by sharing DIY tips, money-saving strategies, and clarifying the truth when it comes to planning a wedding and choosing vendors. My ultimate goal is to spread the wealth in so many other areas including preparing for and raising children, buying a home, planting a flower/vegetable garden, etc. In this day and age, especially being young with an education made useless by a hurting economy, it's critical to know how to have the "American dream" with a small budget.

Plan on seeing books your can purchase on Personalizing Your Wedding, The Truth About Wedding Vendors, Achieving Your Perfect Wedding Day Look, and also . . .

-DIY Baby: how to prep for a new baby without having to stretch your budget
-Healthy Recipes for Every Budget: tons of healthy recipes on a dime for families
-The Road to Conception: the journey every couple takes in trying to conceive
-Growing Your Own Vegetables for Health: easy step-by-step tips for your own garden
-and so many more

We will also be providing training, classes, and certifications, articles on tons of different topics, and ultimately, our consulting services for weddings, parties, or even just advice on any number of topics. Keep following us even after your wedding for every milestone your and your family may go through.

We are going to be here through every stage you reach and for the long haul. I hope you enjoy our new offerings!

Weddings

For so long our business has focused specifically on creating incredible weddings for brides all over the country. We specialize in saving money and finding amazing alternatives to the expensive options brides and grooms are offered every day.

There's no reason you can't have an incredible wedding within the budget you have to work with. You've seen those platinum weddings on TV? Well this can be YOU without the price that they had to pay to get it. We are not abandoning this cause, and will still be here for you with more articles, books, classes, certifications, pictures, ideas, and even advice to help you.

Caring for Your Home

One of the first big steps most couples make in their new marriage is to purchase a new home, move in together, and/or start combining belongings. Let us help you in this area like we've always been there to walk you through the wedding planning process.

We will be offering helpful information cleaning, organizing, decorating, and even fixing minor repairs in your new home.  And, to stick with our overarching theme, we will continue to help you with saving money. This will include redecorating on a budget, finding great new pieces for your home, and even saving money at the grocery store.

Cooking

As new home-owners, co-habitating spouses, and a family, cooking for two will now be a daily responsibility. Regardless of who in the family is doing the cooking, finding healthy, interesting meals every night can be challenging.

I want to provide you with tons of fun, easy recipes that will delight not only you spouse, but for inevitable dinner parties and family visits, will also delight all of your friends and family members.  Becoming a family means more than clubbing, dates, movies, and going out. You'll now be thinking about taking care of your home, starting a family and creating a future together. Having a healthy supply of cost-friendly, budget-friendly, delicious meals is the start of any great home.

There's not even a reason to wait until we have the website up and running in it's new state, I already have tons of recipes for you available on http://vvanness.hubpages.com/. Feel free to check it out and get started building your collection!

Parenting

Once you've begun settling into living together with the issues of dirty socks on the floor, the toilet seat left up, and who is going to do the dishes, I bet you're going to start thinking about starting a family. Everyone usually does!

The idea of parenting is exciting! I want to be there for you as you experience every step. I've got a couple of new books about to be published; one called The Road to Conception for couples trying to conceive, and DIY Baby helping couples prepare for a new baby in the home without breaking your budget.

Not only will this section start with trying to get pregnant, but it will cover pregnancy, bringing your baby home and the steps of development through childhood, and even home-schooling, behavior problems, helping them to sleep, sibling rivalry, and anything else you will be dealing with. Stay with us for some great classes, articles, and books on this topic!

Gardening

Nothing is more important than being able to provide for your family in a healthy but inexpensive way. Gardening is a new hobby growing quickly in popularity across the country. Whether or not you have children, this is a great project that teaches responsibility, caring for something other than yourself, and providing naturally for your family.

We'll begin with something easy, growing your own tomato plants in pots, with tons of yummy tomato recipes for your new veggies! We'll move into starting your own vegetable garden, handling insects and pesticides, growing fruit trees, designing a flower garden, organic gardening, square foot gardening, pruning, no-dig gardening, etc.

I've had a huge request for articles of all types of gardening topics. Stay tuned and check in at http://vvanness.hubpages.com/ for tons of great gardening articles I've already written. There will be tons more to come!

Green Living

To satisfy even the more well-intended of needs, I'll be talking about eating for your health, chemicals found in foods, recycling, preserving natural resources, all-natural cleaning, energy saving tips, organic lawn care, holistic product reviews, etc.

More and more people today are looking for ways to save money, save resources, and protect our environment. I'm totally game! We practice these strategies in our own home and I strive to have a GREEN business in every sense of the word.

I'm sharing tips, tricks, suggestions, and knowledge for eco-friendly practices in every area of life for all of those interested in doing this in our own lives. I keep this section separate from the others in an effort not to offend those that don't agree. But it would be remiss of me not to provide a wealth of information to my interested fans in all of the areas above and more for GREEN living.

I hope you enjoy!

This is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your guests, short of providing a candy bar. Everyone loves a hot bath at the end of a rough day or week and this gives your loved ones an excuse to pamper themselves. What’s even better is that you can provide them homemade bath salts in any container and in any color to make sure it fits perfectly in with your wedding theme.
 
A homemade gift is always warmly welcomed and you can write a cute note to attach to it or include with it to let your guests know how much you truly appreciate them.
 
Soak up the atmosphere on our special day
Then take home these bath salts to soak your cares away.
 
Materials Needed:
Epsom Salts
Baking Soda (which is a natural moisturizer)
Essential Oil
 
Directions:
When making a small batch for myself I use 1 cup of Epsom Salts, 1 Tablespoon of Baking Soda and 2-3 drops of Essential Oil. I generally prefer to leave mine white, but a drop or two of food coloring can be used to color the salts, or mica pigments can be found online or in soap making shops if you prefer a more natural way of coloring yours.

So many brides jump straight into the wedding magazines and go to all of the online wedding shops to check out wedding favors for their wedding guests. If you do the same thing, you’re likely to pay close to $500 or more just for wedding guest favors. That’s a great deal of money to thank everyone for coming to your wedding!

I know it’s trendy to have the latest and greatest wedding favors that all of the wedding websites are constantly marketing, but you could have something even more personal and unique that will thrill your wedding guests without having to spend all of that money.
 
Who really wants another shot glass, cake shaped gift box or can opener? I’ve personally got more personalized coasters and wine stoppers than I could choke on from all of the weddings I’ve attended. What I truly love though, not that I’m expecting a gift, is when the bride and groom hand out something useful or meaningful, like candy! lol

Plants, bath scrubs, and even cake to take home are also wonderful items for your guests. If they can use it or enjoy it in some way, then you’ve hit the jackpot.
 
Here are some great ideas for inexpensive gifts for your guests so you don’t have to be like everyone else!

-CD of Wedding Music
 
The entire way through our wedding I remember thinking, “Wow, this is wonderful music!” lol Of course, my husband and I chose it all ourselves over the course of our planning. Of course it was wonderful! We made sure, after our wedding, to have a cd made so that we could play all of our favorite music over and over again and remember our special day.
 
By providing your loved ones with a cd of all of your wedding music, you can give the same gift of wonderful music to help them remember. Especially if your music was a little bit of everything for everyone, they will all greatly appreciate having some great music for any occasion.

-Holiday Ornaments
 
This is a precious idea I’ve seen and used many times before. Great for a fall, winter or even New Year’s Eve wedding, this is truly a keepsake that your guests will use over and over again.
 
They can easily be decorated with different colors, different decorations and inserts inside, unique ribbons, notes and just about anything you could imagine. Consider using these beautiful ornaments, that you can purchase very inexpensively at your local craft store, for your upcoming nuptials. Every year around the holidays, your guests will pull out this memory to hang on their tree to remember  you and your new marriage.

-Growing Own Seedlings
 
Anything homemade has a personal touch like no other. Whether you are baking cakes, offering homemade hot sauce, soap, syrup, or bath salts, when you make something yourself, it becomes more meaningful than just about anything else you could give.
 
Imagine giving your guests home grown seedlings that you’ve been nurturing for the last few months versus giving all of your guests a wine stopper or a key chain that you purchased from the store. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those items, but something you’ve put your heart into easily shows.
 

-Combining Escorts and Favors 
 
This is a fantastic way to delight your guests and save a great deal of money as well! You can use your favors for your escort cards and vice versa.
 
Guests will love grabbing a cute bottle of Limóncello or a sweet basket of crackers and cheeses telling them where to sit for the evening! And talk about giving them a snack while they’re waiting. What about providing them with beautiful candles for escort cards that will light their way to the right table, along with providing for wedding lighting and giving them something warm to remember you by when they take it home? Think about what would go with your theme and give guests something special at the same time.
 

-Measuring Spoons
 
I’ve personally always thought these were a really cute favor. I think if I got them at every wedding it would get really old really fast. However, I love getting really creative favors when I visit a wedding, obviously I don’t expect to get anything when I go.
 
These are one of those items! Everyone uses measuring spoons and all of the sets I see at friends’ houses are always really old, half broken and are missing a piece or two. What better gift would this make at just the right wedding to give everyone a new set of measuring cups! This way when they are cooking dinner for their families, they will think of you and what an amazing time they had!
 

-DIY Coasters

This may seem like one of those typical wedding favors, but what makes this something special is that it is handmade by you! If you simply purchase some of the fancy coasters offered by one of the many wedding favor companies, it’s nothing different than what every other bride and groom are giving their guests.
 
When they see it, probably in the back of some drawer or shoved in the back of the closet, it will just be another of the favors they’ve gotten over the years. I guarantee you that this won’t happen to your beautifully handmade coasters. I have seen tons of our friends with some of the handmade pieces of our invite still on their refrigerators. They like them because they were handmade and can’t seem to throw them away. BINGO!

-Infused Sugar Canisters

The wonderful uses of infused sugars are endless. You can use the citrus or lavender sugar in a pound cake or sugar cookie recipe to add a hint of flavor or simply place a teaspoon in your coffee (think espresso bean-infused!) or when mixing a cocktail.
 
It can also be used to garnish the glass rim of some fresh squeezed lemonade or another delicious drink! The sugars make wonderful gifts and for a special touch, attach your favorite recipe that the sugar would compliment. Any type of citrus zest, vanilla bean or herb will work perfectly.
 

-Birdseed Hearts

If you don’t like the idea of spending a bundle on favors, or if you are opting for favor donations instead, birdseed wedding favor hearts are a sweet, simple, eco-friendly way to thank your guests, and the birds.

Birdseed wedding favor hearts are so easy to DIY, a second grader can make them. And they’re incredibly inexpensive to put together. With a little bit of twine, some birdseed and peanut butter and a sweet little note, you’ve got all you need to really give your guests something unique!

It’s no wonder fall weddings are so popular. Changing leaves create amazing photo ops and with the summer heat long gone, your guests have a wonderful breeze to keep them cool and fresh. From color palettes to centerpieces to cakes, here are tons of inspired ideas for your autumn wedding.
When considering décor, it’s going to be all about texture, deliciously rich colors, glamorous touches, and a few elements that subtly say fall.

 
-Think tablecloths in tactile, visually intriguing materials like ruched silk, pin-tucked linens, and linens in twists or contours.

-For an in-the-moment look, mix subdued neutral colors with surprise pops of bright oranges, yellows, magentas, and even reds. One stylish bride I've worked with chose beautiful beige linen napkins for her wedding with magenta undersides, which peeked just slightly when they were folded on the table.   

 
-Speaking of napkins, consider how you decorate them on the table. Tie them with small bundles of millet or a crab apple accent for a fall feel. You can even make your own napkin rings using twine and berries, herbs, velvet or even grosgrain ribbon.

-Add a seasonal touch to your ceremony by using shafts of wheat or bunches of grapes as aisle markers. Say your vows under a pergola covered with grape vines, even if you’re not in the wine country.

-Metallic accents continue to be huge and can really bring an extra sparkle to your wedding when using copper or bronze. Gold or colored crackled vases will add glamorous pops of shine to cocktail tables and centerpieces. And any golf leaf accessories will liven up any table or place setting.

-Rather than tons of tiny votives, make a statement with thick pillar candles in rich hues like pomegranate and aubergine. Display them in beds of crystals for a glitzy, glam effect.

-If the weather requires you to stay indoors, but you want the natural element, rim the room with potted or fake trees showing off their most electric fall colors.

-By using LED light fixtures, you can easily change the mood for different portions of the party. Start cocktails with a sunny effect; move to pink and purple sunset tones on the walls and ceiling during dinner; and then slowly morph into a deep blue with white stars as you and your guests take to the dance floor.