Vows, Photography and a Sense of Desperation

I was cruising through the wedding blogs that are constant inspirations to me and came across this:

I (name here), take you (name here), to be my lawfully wedded husband. To love you without reservation and to demonstrate that love in action, as well as word. To turn to you and not on you in times of trial; and to practice honest and thoughtful communication, especially when its most difficult to do so. To challenge and inspire you to be all that I believe you can, and to welcome the same from you with an open heart. To make passion a priority, and faithfully work to entice and attract you through the years. I vow to trust in your love and put apology and forgiveness above ego. To take ownership of my health and to care for yours; to celebrate your joys and share your sorrows as long as we both shall live. From my hand to your heart, I thee wed.
Slightly modified version from http://www.thebrokeassbride.com/

I love how the phrasing doesn’t demean, make submissive or place on a pedestal, one person or the other. The overall feel I get from it is that I can and will do everything within my power to take care of myself, be supportive of you and if you require assistance at any time I will be there with a helping hand.

After going through and organizing the down stair storage area, I finally have everything of mine out in the open and about to see the light of day (mostly because I need to go through it again). I spent two hours in a 9 x 12 room filled to the brim with boxes and no where to put them so I could sort it. I ended up doing one side of the room and using the other as a stacking ground before repeating on the other side. I have to say that about 1/3 of the boxes in the back where mine, so there’s a lot more space back there then there used to be.

I read an interesting article on self catering for weddings and I have to say that it put some ideas in my head about doing either all or some of the work. The thing is, I’d probably need to hire helpers to keep food flowing and heating before placing anyways so it might just come down to making appetizers and desserts while the main courses are catered. This will most likely depend on catering staff hired for the day and what they will and won’t allow.

I also posted my first armature wedding photography ad on craigslist and when I was speaking to Mike about how I didn’t think anyone was going to contact me, seeing as I was priced the same as the other photographers, he recommended that I cut the price in half. At first I was bit put out, after all taking pictures for a wedding for any length of time can be exhausting, then he said, ‘it’s still about $30 an hour’ and I realized that yeah I probably wasn’t going to get an hits with a 4 hour session costing $300 but if I did a $150 session, especially since I don’t have much wedding photography under my belt, I’d probably get a lot more interest. He’s right. How can I expect with everyone else out there that people will want to pick me when I don’t have the same spread as some of the other photographers nor am I offering a full DVD of the pictures I’ve taken. I don’t have all the equipment I need nor the background to make most people comfortable with paying any sort of money for pictures. Admittedly I was planning on purchasing the equipment as I go, but in order to do that I really need to have customers to reach that point. Do I feel like I would be selling myself short? No, just being more realistic with the price of the merchandize (my self) at its current state.

After the move this weekend, money won’t be tight, but saving will be a problem, especially for a wedding. We have a little over 12 months to save at least $5000 and with most of our cash flow going towards bills and living expenses, it’s not going to leave enough at the end of the month to save up. Aside from photography (I plan on trying to do any and all events) I’m also planning on re-upping my Mary Kay consultant ID and continuing to actively post new items on my Etsy account. My goal in the end is to not have to take a loan out to help pay for the wedding. Here’s to hoping.