"When do we have to decide?"

Couples shopping for a photographer often ask "When do we have to decide?" It's a difficult question to answer because there is no way to know if a particular date is on the verge of being booked or if it will stay open for weeks...or even months.

September Saturdays tend to be popular with the first Saturday after Labor Day usually being the most popular day of the entire year for a Maine wedding. Also, three-day weekends tend to be popular with Saturday and Sunday booking early. But that's about as far as the generalizations go. It's anybody's guess when any other particular date might book. My advice is to start your planning/shopping with the vendors who can serve only one client a day (most venues in Maine, photographer, band or DJ, some florists and some caterers). The earlier you shop these vendors, the better chance you will have of landing your first choice and not getting discouraged by the "sorry, we're not available" responses. After you get all of these vendors squared away, then you can shop the vendors who can service multiple weddings on the same day (wedding dress, attendants' dresses, cake, favors, invitations.)

How early is early enough? It's not uncommon for some couples to book vendors as many as eighteen months out, and if you are looking at one of the most popular dates or you have your heart absolutely set on one and only one date, venue, photographer, band, etc., there's no reason to wait. Go ahead, take the plunge, lock up your first choice, and you might even get in at a lower price (before the next price increase.)

Most couples, however, start to shop seriously about a year ahead, i.e., next summer's brides & grooms will use this summer to start planning their wedding.

Queries tend to pick up again around the Thanksgiving holiday, they are brisk through the Christmas/New Year's holidays, then things become highly competitive during January, as bridal shows can encourage a booking frenzy. Traditionally January is the single busiest booking month for photographers. February is also a busy month, and by the end of February many of the more popular Maine photographers will have booked most of their weddings for the coming summer, with only a few dates still open.

That being said, if you got engaged on Valentine's Day and want to plan a wedding for this summer, there is no reason to automatically assume that all the good vendors are gone. A very lovely wedding can be planned in just two or three months, and every year I'm impressed by a couple that is able to pull everything together in record time. The key to planning in this situation is to be flexible about your site and date, to not get discouraged, and to be able to make up your mind quickly when you do find a vendor you like who is available. Plus, each time you're told "sorry, we aren't available," ask for referrals. Often you'll get your best leads from other vendors.

If I had a daughter planning a summer wedding in Maine, I would give her two pieces of advice:

1. If at all possible, line up you vendors before Thanksgiving.

2. If you find a vendor who is open for your date and you decide that vendor is your first choice, don't drag your feet signing a contract or putting down a deposit. Once you've made up your mind, don't risk losing that vendor by delaying. Sometimes a vendor will have two (or more) couples asking for the same date, but will not tell either couple that their date is in jeopardy of going to another couple because that statement could come across as an insincere sales tactic. Or, someone could pop up the very next day asking about your date. So, if you find your perfect venue, photographer, band, etc., go ahead and do the paperwork to insure that vendor will be yours.

Kristen & Ashley to be featured by The Knot

Congratulations to Kristen and Ashley who just learned that their July 2005 wedding will be featured by The Knot in its Real Weddings section. The date has not yet been set for the feature to run, but The Knot is busy collecting information to create the story.
In its Real Weddings feature, The Knot showcases "the most beautiful, fun, extraordinary wedding[s]." And, as a senior graphic designer for a national company based near Boston, Kristen used her artistic talents and attention to detail to put together a truly gorgeous wedding.
Kristen, who grew up in Brewer, Maine, and Ashley, who is from the Montreal area, met through their work. They were married in Bar Harbor's Holy Redeemer Church and the reception followed at the Bar Harbor Inn, an elegant seaside resort near Acadia National Park. To honor Ashley's French heritage and the twenty or so guests from Canada who were able to attend, the couple incorporated many French touches, starting with invitations that had some text in French. That was carried through to table numbers written in French, favor boxes that read "merci," a signature French martini cocktail at the reception, and a sunset cruise after around Frenchman's Bay on the schooner Margaret Todd.

The wedding colors of pink and taupe were likewise carried out though the invitations, attendants' dresses, flowers by Laurie Riddell of Cottage Flowers, cake by Janice Strout, and even the pink of the French martinis.A very fun part of the wedding weekend that deserves mention even though it wasn't pink, taupe or French was the rehearsal party the night before at Carmen Verandahs. The weather was perfect for outdoor dining on the porch, which overlooks the Bar Harbor village green but still provides an intimate setting for special occasions.

Happy birthday to Scout!

Where else but in a blog can you do something totally self-serving like posting about your dog's birthday?

So, here is a big Happy Birthday to Scout, a fellow February baby, who will be eight on Saturday. A big thank-you to Scout's friend and my talented assistant Hannah for surprising us with a yummy cake for a shared celebration. Finally, I am eternally grateful to Penny Overton of Wayfarer Shelties in New Gloucester, who breeds the best Shelties in the whole state of Maine, and maybe in the whole world. Scoutie was a sweetheart when I brought him home from Penny's on Easter weekend of 1998, and he's just gotten better and better since.

PHOTO TIP: Maine Harbors web site

One of my favorite Maine web sites is Maine Harbors. With just a few clicks, I can find out when the tide will be high at the Bass Harbor Headlight or when the sun will set at Popham Beach. It's an invaluable planning tool for the Maine photographer.Now I'm fairly certain that John Standish wasn't thinking about photographers when he set up his web site. Based in Cape Porpoise, one of Maine's loveleliest nooks, Standish most likely was thinking of the legions of boaters who ply the waters off Maine's 3000+ miles of coast. But, photographers are just as interested in knowing when the Royal River will be an ugly mudflat. Or when it will be too dark to make out the cliffs at Monhegan.

Photographers know that the light around sunrise and sunset is the most photogenic light of the day. We call it "magic light" or refer to that time span as "the magic hour," though it could last longer--or shorter--than an hour. The magic comes from the sun being very low in the sky, casting shadows that are long and soft; in a very short period of time the sun will usually go through dramatic color changes casting orange, gold, red or even pink hues over everything in sight. These are picture-perfect shooting conditions.

Because the conditions are so fleeting, it's important to be in place and ready to shoot as soon as the magic light starts. Usually, that's at civil twilight, roughly thirty minutes before sunrise.

That's where Maine Harbors' tide charts come in. If, for example, I am shooting an article in Acadia National Park, a quick look at the sunrise time in tomorrow's tide chart for Bar Harbor and I know how to set my alarm.For those who have some flexibility in scheduling, Standish's charts can even help us pick the days on which to shoot. If I'm shooting a story at Popham Beach State Park, I'd like to get as much of the sand exposed as possible, so that means shooting at low tide. I can scan the tide charts to see when low tide coincides with sunrise and sunset. That way I'll get my magic light and a wide expanse of sand. Or, if I'm shooting the Bass Harbor Headlight and would prefer to have the rockweed and barnacles on the lower rocks covered by water, I will plan to shoot on a day when high tide coincides with sunrise and sunset.

Couples planning a wedding can benefit from consulting Maine Harbor's charts. Most of the formal posed photos at a wedding are done right before or right after the ceremony, when hair, dresses, make-up, tuxedos, flowers, etc. are all still fresh. Unfortunately, that's usually in the middle of the day, when the sun is overhead; it's the least flattering light of the day, as shadows are harsh and people are often hot and squinting. That's why wedding photographers scurry about looking a spot of shade for formal photos. While it's smart to go ahead and take the formal pictures before folks scatter, it's not a bad idea to plan to reconvene later, just before sunset, to get a few more photos of the wedding party or just the bride and groom in the magic light. This involves a bit of planning. I advise couples to leave a window open, from about sixty minutes before sunset to about thirty minutes before sunset. (You don't want to get too close to sunset as the light will be too dim.) I advise couples to not schedule any specific events (first dance, parents' dances, cake cutting, etc.) during that thirty-minute window. If we are blessed with a gorgeous sunset, we can use that time to dart outside for a few shots

The Maine Harbors site displays six months worth of data for coastal spots from Maine to Connecticut. Looking for sunrise or sunset times more than six months in the future? Check out the U.S. Naval Observatory's Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day. Looking for the tides in another region? Consult SaltWaterTides.com.

There's no place like home

So when I told Jason, the blogging wizzard at my web host, Rainstorm Consulting, that I had started a blog at Blogger.com, he was ultra-supportive. However, he strongly recommended that I relocate the blog to one of my current domain names, instead of giving my clients a third address to try to remember. Isn't it enough to hope they'll remember MicheleStapleton.com, and the recently launched Maine Wedding Photographer flash site? Now I was asking them to also juggle a Blogger.com address?

When the folks at Rainstorm speak, I try very hard to listen because they've been very trusty companions on my journey through all things internet. So today, faster than you could click a pair of ruby slippers three times, Jason "ported" (I think that's geek speak for "picked and up moved") the whole blog to its new home at MicheleStapleton.com/blog.

To encourage visitors to drop by he added a blog button to the navigation bar at MicheleStapleton.com. and we activated a direct link to the blog from the Maine Wedding Photographer site. The final step is putting up a post at the old Blogger.com address so anyone who happens to land over there can find their way to the blog's new home.

Hanging ten very cold ones

Okay, so we will probably never compete with Hawaii, but we do have our own surfers in Maine.

And, we're not talking the kind that navigate a keyboard with ten fingers. We're talking ten toes on an honest-to-goodness surfboard.My assignment yesterday was to accompany a trio of Bowdoin College students who would make their college mascot--a polar bear--proud by surfing in icy waters before their first class. I met the trio on campus before sunrise and we drove to an undisclosed beach--Maine surfers zealously guard the location of their favorite beaches, so I'm not going to give up their secret. The photos are slated to run in a future issue of Bowdoin Magazine.

Nevermind that yesterday was the first day of February, that the wind chill was 13 degrees, and that when I gathered my gear the night before I couldn't find the handwarmers that slip into my winter shooting gloves. Nevermind that when we got to the beach we found the access gate temporarily closed, leaving us with a half-mile jog down a slippery ice-encrusted road to the water. This is Maine surfing at its finest, in the winter when waves peak, so you ignore the "challenges" and simply forge ahead. As crazy as it might seem for anyone to hit a Maine beach on the first day of February, much less stick a toe in water as cold as 34 degrees, two other surfers joined the Bowdoin trio about 9 a.m. And, we saw a handful of walkers on the beach. All to prove that Mainers are a hardy lot!

I'm hoping to catch up with the trio for more photos next time they go out. I'm also hoping that next time my ten fingers will hang a bit more comfortably; as soon as I got home I surfed over to LLBean to order more handwarmers. Here's hoping they arrive before the next big wave.