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Q: What are some easy things we can do to minimize waste for our wedding?

VIDEO SUMMARY

There are so many fun and easy things that you can do to minimize waste for your wedding, so start with decorations and buy them pre loved. Things like table, number holders, signs, frames, cardboxes easels, all these little things that get bought for one day and they have no other purpose but to be used for a wedding. Get them pre loved instead of new on Amazon and Etsy, there’s so much of this stuff already floating around out there, and you can find it in Facebook groups or here in Chicago, we have the Green Wedding Alliance ReCyclery, which is a big wedding decor garage sale with stationery. A lot of sustainable couples will go the digital route, and that’s great for save the dates because it’s just an announcement like, hey, we’re engaged. We’re getting married in this city on this date. But with invitations, you run the risk of people opening these invites, and then they get busy and they forget to open it again and respond. So you might have to do some more work getting those rsVPS. So I recommend going paper. Just make sure you’re using paper made out of recycled materials, biodegradable materials like cotton, handmade papers, seed papers, and for both of them with the elders, make sure you are sending paper copies for them, because we don’t want to make things hard on them. If you are giving your guests favors or gifts, make sure it’s a consumable item like foods, drinks, candles, plants, things that are actually going to be used instead of some decorations that have your names and date on them. And only provide enough for about 50% to 70% of the guest count because most people don’t take these things home at the end of the night. If you’re having a wedding party which is bridesmaids and groomsmen, or you’re people of honor and you’re not particular about the look of your wedding, or you want to get creative, have them go into their closets and reuse things from past weddings or just things that they have in their closet already. So many of us, by the time we’re 30, have dresses from past weddings, suits, tuxes. So just give your wedding party guidelines on color, formality and seasonality and let them have fun with it. And then your wedding is going to have a look that is so unique and not found anywhere else. All right, that’s it. Bye.

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Featured Question

Q: Is there really a wedding mark up?

Do you feel like the industry charges more “because it’s a wedding” and they know it’s an emotional purchase?

Do companies think that they can charge more for weddings since the bride and groom may be willing to spend more on their dream wedding?

Hey wedding pros – is this higher price tag justified? Why? Do you charge more for your service if it is a wedding?

This is a taboo topic, whispered but not discussed… until now.

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2 comments

    Robin Sloan, The Uncorked ProjectVerifiedRobin Sloan, The Uncorked Project

    I have been asked this so many times... does the wedding industry inflate prices when they hear it's a wedding?

    Here is my honest answer (as a former wedding photographer)... NO. Did I charge more for a wedding than a 50th birthday party or a family portrait session? Yes, absolutely. I charged A LOT more for a wedding.

    Was I taking advantage of the emotional sell? Absolutely not.

    The main reasons I charged more for a wedding were: the unseen amount of work involved in the 12+ months leading up to the wedding, the skill level needed on the day, the INTENSE pressure to create perfect "portfolio level work" no matter what the reality of the situation- but mostly it is to compensate for the time AFTER the wedding in post production.

    Little known fact about wedding photography - the real job is sitting at a computer editing photos. Photographers spend many hours behind the computer carefully selecting and editing photos. They make adjustments, crop, and adjust colors to ensure each image it's best. Don't forget the time it takes for batching, renaming, importing, exporting and uploading the photos and preparing them for delivery.

    Do you think this justifies why photographers charge more for weddings than for other types of shoots?

    Cody Pettengill

    Couldn’t agree more! And on the videography side its an absolute ton of data + editing discipline.

    Its a double sided coin- weddings are extremely high pressure but also high reward when we nail it.

    Our products (photo video) in particular are the only thing that genuinely will last forever . Having fun and ALSO nailing the product is worth the price of entry and frankly more.

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