I was recently at a wedding of one of my friends, they had a fairly big family between them, and invited plenty of friends along to the wedding too.
About half way through the ceremony it suddenly occurred to me that there was something missing...... they had no official wedding photographer.
Strange as it seemed to me, I asked my wife what the reason was. She was just as surprised as me, and thought the same, surely one of the first services you booked for your wedding day was the photographer?
Later on in the day, I walked up to the new bride and groom and congratulated them on their fantastic wedding. They were both delighted with their day, and all the wedding guests seemed to be having a great time.
I used the opportunity to ask them both why they chose to have no wedding photographer, I was a bit concerned that maybe the photographer had let them down and was half expecting to upset the bride with my question.
"We're surrounded by wedding photographers" came the bride's response.
With that, almost on request, an auntie barged me to one side and asked to take a photo of the happy couple.
They smiled, she took the snap, and I thought it was ok - it was their choice not to have a wedding photographer.
Anyway, as the day went on the wedding guests snapped away, as they do. Photos of the couple cutting the wedding cake, photos of them with their parents, kissing in an archway - the list goes on.
The interesting thing was that, there was no single person ordering family and friends around to pose this way or that. The newlyweds simply took a pose and a bundle of paparazzi style wedding guests snapped away.
At the end of the night, the wedding DJ announced that everybody who had a digital camera had to come to the DJ booth.
At the request of the bride and groom, every wedding guest who'd taken digital photos of the couple was handed a credit card style note requesting that they email the full set of their images to the new husband and wife.
Genius I thought, this way they get to flick through literally hundreds and hundreds of wedding photos, choose their very favorites and get them printed at a tiny fraction of the cost of an official wedding photographer.
So, if you want a traditional wedding photographer for your special day, of course you should in theory get a lot of high quality images to treasure from your wedding day.
But, if your budget doesn't quite stretch to an expensive professional wedding photographer, consider printing up these little cards with information on where your wedding guests can send their digital snaps to !
Happy Wedding Planning !