We can’t wait to share your day with you soon and we hope all the planning is going well. We’ll be in touch with you for more specific details around a month before your wedding date, including how to pay the final instalment of your balance, but for now we wanted to send over some more info that we hope is helpful for your planning (if you want to chat earlier than that, you can check out how to arrange a chat with us below).
The details we need from you before your wedding
We want you to plan your wedding, the way you want it – then, when the day arrives, we’ll fit in around it all, capturing so many natural moments for you to look back on. We’ll love being a part of your day – but the way we work means you may forget we’re there at times. You and all your guests will quickly get used to us and feel comfortable with the way we photograph things.
All in all, what does this mean for you and your planning? Well, we’re happy to say you can relax – as you don’t actually have to plan anything for us. Your day is about you and your guests, so all you have to do is have the very best day ever!
We never want photography to be (pardon the pun) the focus of the day, so apart from a few group shots (if you’d like some) the rest of our photography is 100% unposed. No shot shot list, no staging things, no bossing people around, no copying other photographers or replicating our past work.
For the few details we do need from you before your wedding (a few timings, some group shot requests if you’d like some and the addresses we need to be at), we’ll request these much nearer your date – usually a month or few weeks before.
Our documentary approach and artistic style
We’ve touched on our approach above, but one of our previous couples (L&P) put it best when they sent us this just before their Lake District wedding day: “We are so glad we booked you and we are so excited! We’ve been to a number of recent weddings where we’ve been posed almost endlessly, so we are really happy we can just relax on our own day!”. This sums up perfectly why we work the way we do. We want your guests to go away from your wedding talking about the amazing day, not about the photographer ordering people about and dragging you away from the guests for hours and hours.
Even your couple shots (if you would like some) will be as relaxed and as close to documentary as possible. We’ll go for a walk and let you be yourselves, enjoying some time together away from the crowd – it’s as simple as that!
Meeting you before your wedding date
Getting to know you before your wedding is really important to us. We’ll arrange to call you (by phone or Zoom) before your wedding date, after we’ve collected all your wedding details and when all your plans are set in stone. We’re usually very happy to chat just before the wedding, in your wedding week. However, if you’d like to meet or talk to us before then, we’d be more than happy to!
We can meet over the phone, by Zoom, or in person. Face to face meetings can be held at a café or pub near our home in East Yorkshire, usually during the daytime midweek (we tend to be busy on weekends for obvious reasons!). However, in nearly all cases, we chat over the phone or by video call. We photograph weddings all over the UK and further afield, so we’re used to speaking remotely as it’s usually the most convenient option.
Our team on your wedding day
Your lead photographer (main photographer) will always be one of us – that’s Hollie or Patrick. If you’ve selected two photographers, we will always aim to photograph your day together. However, on some occasions, it’s not possible for both of us to photograph weddings together.
But don’t worry – if you have two photographers selected and this is the case, we will use a trusted ‘second shooter’ to work alongside. Since we began working together in 2017, we’ve only ever worked with photographers and assistants who can shoot in our style – producing images that fit seamlessly into our portfolio and maintain our very, very high standards. You can rest assured that if we do use a second shooter at your wedding, they’ll be a photographer who we know will do the amazing job you – and we – expect.
Looking to add on a second photographer or unlimited coverage?
If you’re interested in adding on a second photographer or later coverage (so one photographer stays later into the evening reception to capture more dance floor action), please get in touch. We can also offer highlights videos and luxury albums, too.
Editing your images
Editing is an important technical and creative process – and Hollie is an expert in editing! Hollie is the one who is responsible for the way our final images “look”, so that we maintain consistency across the artistic style of all our photos. Whoever photographs your day – Hollie, Patrick, on our own, together or with or without a second shooter – our images always have our signature ‘look’.
The 6, 8, 10, 12 hours (and sometimes much longer!) that we spend photographing every wedding is just the start of our work. The editing process takes far longer, with Hollie editing each image individually, before we both work on the final photographs and gallery together. Every wedding is always a collaboration between us, which we think makes it feel even more special.
Delivering your gallery
Timeframe
We’ll get some preview images to you within 2-3 weeks after your wedding. With us, this isn’t just a few images: we provide around 50 from your day to keep you going until the full gallery is ready! Then it will take at least 3 months (approx. 95 days) to deliver your full wedding gallery. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable that it will take a little longer than this, and we’ll update you as needed if this is the case.
Of course we know how excited you’ll be to receive your images and we’ll get them to you as soon as we can – but if you expect the final gallery to be at least three months after your wedding date, you’ll be prepared in advance. And trust us, the final images will be more than worth the wait! And as we deliver such a big preview to begin with, you won’t be left without any images while we work on editing your gallery to perfection. It takes time to edit one image to our very high quality, so as you can image, it takes even longer to edit a full gallery and it’s a process we will never rush.
How many images you’ll receive
We don’t put an exact number on the amount of images we deliver, because it really does differ from wedding to wedding. Above all, we want to deliver all the images we can to you – so we do just this, providing you with every single image we can to tell the story of your day. But to give you an idea, you can expect 500-600 images for an ‘all day’ (getting ready to the dancing) package with one photographer. With two photographers, it will be between 700 and 800 images. If you’re having less coverage (say, half a day or less) you can expect to receive less images, and for longer, ‘unlimited’ coverage you can usually expect more.
Your password-protected online gallery
But how will you receive all of these amazing images? Well, you’ll get every image via a password protected online gallery, plus a slideshow of a selection of images set to music. This will be accessible to you and anyone you invite to see the images of your day. From your gallery, you can pick your favourites or download every image. Also, though we hope you love every single moment we capture for you, there’s a handy ‘hide’ function. This means if you don’t love an image or two as much as you love the others, you can simply hide them from everyone and forget about them.
We always encourage our couples to make their first gallery look-through a bit of an occasion. Get the candles lit, get a bottle of wine out (perhaps some wedding champagne if there is any left), and bask in the glory of reliving your wedding day! We’d love to hear how much you love your images too. So please do keep us updated after you receive your previews and final gallery.
Important: downloading from your online gallery and backing up images
We know, we know, in the excitement of wedding planning, talk of backing up files isn’t exactly exciting – but your images are designed to be treasured forever, so they need to be able to be kept safe.
With this in mind, we highly recommend you backup the whole gallery within one year of receiving it. We cannot guarantee the long term storage of your photos once they’ve been delivered to you, so we always ask you to make your own back ups of your wedding photos. Actually, we recommend making two: one back-up online via cloud storage, then one physical back-up too (we recommend buying a good quality, shock resistant hard drive for this).
Printing your images
We also really recommend getting an album made! There is no better way of viewing your images – plus, we love how special it feels. If you’d like a really high quality album or prints, we can provide prices and options. We only provide professional prints and albums – higher in quality and longer-lasting than any ‘high-street’ option available.
Supplier recommendations for you
We know loads of amazing suppliers of all kinds – videographers, make up artists, florists, you name it – so if you need any recommendations at all, please let us know and we’ll be happy to help. Even if it’s last minute, please don’t hesitate to ask: we want you to have the very best wedding suppliers possible!
Keeping in touch
As the excitement builds for your own day, we definitely want to keep up to date with what you’ve been up to, so please do follow us on instagram @mandgweddingphotography if we’re not already connected. We love getting to know you better!
If you’d like to see regular posts from us in the run up to your day, you can give a few of our posts a like to let Instagram know you’re interested in what we do. That way, you’ll see more of our work as the year goes on (algorithms hey, don’t you just love ‘em?).
Recommendations
We often get recommendations from our previous and current couples – thanks if you’ve already done this and thanks so much if you do so in the future. There is absolutely no better booking than a recommendation from you! It means a lot to us to know that you love our work so much that you’d recommend us to others. It’s also always a treat to see our previous couples at weddings we photograph!
Thanks for reading
We hope the above was useful and gives you all the info you need right now. Just remember, the main thing is: please continue planning your perfect wedding day! That’s all that matters to us. We can’t wait to see those plans come to fruition and we can’t wait to photograph all the funniest, most emotional and most beautiful moments of your day.
We’ll be in touch when we next need some details, but if you’ve any questions at all before then, please don’t hesitate to drop us an email (and hopefully we’ll see you on instagram before then!). Because if you need to check anything – or talk anything through – at any point, before or after your wedding, we’re here to help.
We can’t wait for your day!
We really can’t wait for your wedding day! Every wedding we photograph is amazing yet always so different. Some are intimate, with just a few guests. Some are the biggest parties you can imagine. Whatever you have planned, we know you’ll love it so much, you might even find yourself playing air guitar with a wedding guest. Thanks for reading and see you soon, Hollie & Patrick.