Excited for 2009

I’ve been sitting here for the past few minutes looking over our calendar for 2009 wedding bookings and worrying about not having enough dates filled.  Then I realized, Hello, it’s January. And so far we have almost double the amount of weddings booked compared to last year.  And it’s absolutely crazy to not expect to have more dates filled in the upcoming months.  What am I freaking out over?

Once all that really sunk in, it hit me how absolutely awesome this ride has been so far.   I am so grateful and excited about our prospects for this coming year, and if things continue to grow at this pace, look out 2010!

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of client meetings, bookings, and brainstorming for this coming year.   We’ve met some great, interesting, and down-to-earth couples and are honored to have been selected as their wedding photographers – and not just because all the brides we’ve met with are smokin’.  None of this would have been possible without the trust our earliest clients put in us, and for that I am very thankful.  Seriously, you have all been AMAZING and it’s been a privilege to work with you.

We got the chance to learn about some great venues this year, and met some wonderful people.  We are looking forward to making friends with a LOT more people this year, including, but not limited to, some of these awesome Michigan wedding coordinators we’ve been networking with online:

• Ana at Two Foot Creative
• Amanda at Bliss Weddings
• Lindsey at Emma Lynn Designs
• Christie at Outstanding Weddings & Events

Yeah, that’s right ladies, I’m calling you out!  And my goal is to work with you on at least one event this coming year.    Also, while I’m giving shoutouts, I’d also like to recommend the Wed Michigan Blog.  Lindsey, the creator of the blog, is a Michigan-native temporarily living in Boston.  She posts about creative wedding ideas, local vendors, and practical advice on budgeting and enjoying your wedding day.  If you’re a Michigan bride, you should be following this blog!

Before I wrap up, here’s a couple things currently going on with West Park Photography that I wanted to share:

• We are working on our new childrens & lifestyle photography site.  We’d love to add some more childrens work to our portfolio.  If you are in the Metro-Detroit area and are interested in having unique, unscripted portraiture of your family done, shoot us an email.  We will be giving away a FREE 1-hour session to the first three people in Grosse Pointe that make an appointment.  We figure this is a good way to help us make some local contacts.
• In the next couple weeks, I will be designing and ordering our new sample albums and guestbooks for 2009.  If you have already booked with us and want us to contact you when the new samples are available, let us know.  We’d love to show them to you.
• Also, I just want to put the word out that we have started getting some inquiries about offering Boudoir Sessions.  This is something we’ve been interested in offering, but not something we’ve really advertised, so we were plesantly surprised when people started asking about them.  If you have any interest in setting something up, send us an email and let us know.  If we have enough inquiries, we may set aside a day to rent a beautiful location and offer a series of private mini-sessions.
• While our June calendar is starting to fill up, we still have some great dates available for this spring and July.  If you’ve been procrastinating on booking a photographer, we might be able to help you!
• We get a lot of questions about how far we will travel.  Generally speaking, everything is negotiable.  We have a wedding booked in St. Joseph on the west side of the state this year, and others  up north.  We are also willing to travel to surrounding states and SW Ontario.  And while we aren’t actively seeking destination events right now, we definitely would consider them.  I am familiar with the SW Florida Gulf Coast area after living there for almost 2 years.  Any event taking place on the gulf coast between Sarasota  and Naples would be very do-able for us.  It’s 19 degrees here.  It will not take much prompting to get us on a plane!    I realize the chances of us getting a Florida wedding from this blog post is slim, but hey, I’m throwing it out there!

Okay, that’s it for now.  Coming up next will be Erin & Ian’s beautiful wedding at River Birch Lodge in Hartland, MI. I’ll leave you with this photo I took a couple weeks ago.  Why are the best sunsets on days it’s FREEZING?