Category Archive

industry insiders

The Offbeat Wed community includes hundreds of inclusive wedding industry pros who are all working to change the cynical, exploitative nature of the mainstream Wedding Industrial Complex. We invite our awesome offbeat vendor friends to share their industry insider tips with us and our readers — together we can change the wedding industry to be more inclusive, more offbeat, and more awesome! (If you’re an offbeat vendor, let’s get you in here!)

wedding scam

Luring scams and fake travel schemes: Why wedding photographers need to be careful too!

I recently received an inquiry from a woman who was asking if I would fly out to Hawaii for a portrait session. Everything seemed on the up-and-up… until they told me they would not pay my travel expenses up-front and wanted me to accept a payment for their event planner, who would only take cash, and then send it to the planner myself. I then did some research to see if there were any scams like this going around, and found something really scary…

protect your wedding photos

Photographers don’t always keep your files: Why and how you should protect your wedding photos

Crap happens. Fires, floods, massive earthquakes that flatten Seattle (you all know what I’m talking about). Or maybe we’re just talking about an excited kid who rips a page, or a toddler who spills their milk. Prints can be damaged. And as much as we would like to think that we can always go back and buy another copy, not all photographers keep an archive. So here’s why and how to capture, display, and protect your wedding photos…

Secrets from a dance teacher: 6 things you need to know about wedding dance lessons

Many, many (but not all) weddings feature dancing in some fashion. There’s the first dance, the parent and child dance, and then there’s the reception. That’s a lot of dancing! If there’s going to be dancing at your wedding, it’s a lot more fun if you have some idea of what you’re doing. As someone who has professionally taught wedding couples how to dance, as well as gone through my own engagement process (and learning to dance with my fiancé), here are some tips for learning how to dance.

4 types of wedding photobombers

Save yourself from these 4 common kinds of wedding photobombers

With pretty much every guest bringing some sort of recording device to a wedding nowadays, the odds of running into photobombers is growing increasingly higher. Many couples have avoided this with planning “unplugged” weddings; however, there are still a few types of people who don’t like to play by the rules.

After having shot weddings for nearly seven years, I feel like I’ve seen enough photobombers to be able to not only classify them but have learned a little about how to deal with them. Here are, from my experience, the four categories of photobombers, and how to deal with them…