Choosing your wedding photographer

It is important to book your wedding photographer as soon as possible.  It should be as early as possible once you start your wedding planning as it’ll give us more time to get to know each other so you feel comfortable working with us as we’ll be along with you the whole day. 

From our experience, Lemons & Ants can also give you suggestions on how to plan your timeline to ensure the day goes smoothly and also give you recommendations on other wedding vendors.

Once your venue(s) for your ceremony, reception and any other important venues have been booked and confirmed, Lemons & Ants will do the behind the scenes research to know each location to plan for the best spots for your day.  We can also make recommendations for the best lighting for each location so that you can include that your planning to have the best photos.

As mentioned above, Lemons & Ants will be your guide along every step of the planning process for your wedding.  We meet with you scheduled check-ins to discuss the timeline of your wedding day and make suggestions. 

Once we get to know your photography hopes for the wedding day, you can leave all that in our hands and just enjoy your family and friends and above all each other on your magical day.

While you enjoy the afterglow of the eventful day, we’ll be busy behind the scenes working on editing those beautiful images.  We’ll reach out and plan a meeting day to reveal the wedding photos to you.  We can also help with any of your printing desires such as an heirloom album or impactful wall art that you can enjoy together in your home.

Yes, definitely!  We offer discounted rates for our lead photographer if you need extra coverage beyond the wedding package you pick and you can add hours up to the wedding day.  In fact, we will check in with you at the end of the wedding day before we leave to make sure we’re no longer needed.  An additional invoice will be sent after the wedding to cover this.

While we do offer the option of adding an associate photographer, our lead photographer Anthony also has the experience of photographing short and long weddings and knows he can cover all the important details of the day alone.  There are definitely benefits to adding on an associate photographer and that will depend on your preferences.

Here’s more on our blog to understand when you might want to add on an associate photographer.

Yes, we offer engagement photos!  For any couples who are booked with us for their wedding day, we the engagement session at a discounted rate.  We recommend doing the engagment session well before the wedding day so you can actually enjoy the experience and have fun with each other.  It’s also a great way to get to know us and give us a chance to practice in front of the camera so that you feel comfortable being photographed.

Depending on the wedding package you choose, we will split the package amount into 2-4 installments that are due at different intervals leading up to your wedding date.  The first payment is due at booking and the final payment is due a week before the wedding day (so that you don’t have to worry about dealing with this too close to your wedding day) and the other payments are due between these two dates.

The payments also trigger a check-in with us where we get together and review timelines and any questions you or we may have.

Family photos definitely require a bit of planning because you’re dealing with so many people but also different combinations of people.  We would suggest working backwards to prepare for this by sitting down and writing out a list of ALL the different combinations of groups you may want photographs for – you may want to involve your parents for this so there’s no missed groups or disappointment in not getting a photograph with the stars of the wedding – YOU, the bride and the groom!

Once you have the list compiled, we suggest figuring out how much time you need for all the portraits by adding up the time for each group/combo.  We recommend a minimum of 2 minutes for smaller groups and 5 minutes for larger ones.

Then finally enlist the help of your family members on each side of your family to help with organizing and gathering people – they should be members who know the members of your family/friends well enough to be able to pick them out of a crowd!

Here’s further tips on how to prepare for this.

While this is a smaller group and easier to organize, we definitely suggest blocking off a good amount of time (at least 1-1.5 hours) for these photos.  It’ll give us time to get creative and to have some fun with some of the most important people in your wedding.  We would suggest inviting your parents and siblings as well so that you can have special time with them.  And of course, during the planning process, we will discuss best locations depending which time of the day and location we’re at for this part.

Yes, we love photographing the first look and would suggest it to our couples.  It’s just a great way to have a quiet moment for just the two of you in the busy day.  And the best way to enjoy the beautiful and genuine reaction of your groom’s first look at your gorgeous chosen dress.

Lemons & Ants will coordinate this for you to ensure an authentic and un-interruped private moment by hanging back while still documenting your reactions for you to remember these precious moments.

Here’s our further thoughts on why it’s great to have a first look.

Here’s something else you may want to consider when planning your wedding day.

For such a special day with so many, many precious moments you’ll definitely want to remember over the years, we suggest one of our heirloom photo albums.  This is like a visual story book of your day and can be shared with your family and friends time and time again as well as your next generation .

Our heirloom albums are archival quality and are meant to be passed along from generation to generation.  We also custom design each album based on your story and your images so that you don’t have to worry about taking on the overwhelming task of sorting and gathering your photos yourself.

As an add-on to the album, you could also do some large single wall arts to hang in your home or a gallery of framed photos of those extra special moments.

Here’s a further look into all the print options we offer.

And if you need more convincing on why you should take care of this printing NOW (and not later).