PHOTOGRAPHY PRICES: 

                                                                         WEDDING ..$1,250      

                                                                         BRIDAL SESSION..$ 400   

                                                                         ENGAGEMENT SESSION.....$300 

If you select all three then the total is $$1,850. 
You have the option of selecting only the wedding if you choose.


  BASIC WEDDING:  On your wedding day, I show up 1½ hours before the ceremony and start taking pictures. I continue taking pictures until the bride and groom depart. I cover every activity and get photojournalistic (candid) photos of everything during a six-hour framework. Your photo coverage on your wedding day will be as complete and as beautiful as anything you can get anywhere.
 
I do not offer a series of "packages". I have one price for each item, and offer complete and quality coverage for that price. 

                                        What you receive for $1,850   

        #1: Six continuous hours of coverage (unlimited photos). This usually means 300+ photographs 

         #2: After the wedding, you receive a 4” x 6” inch print of each photograph. These prints will be in a large album (or albums).
 
        #3: A beautiful bride’s album with 20- 8” x 10” prints. You select the 20 photographs you like the best from all of the wedding photos. I make 8” x10” prints of the selected photographs, and you will receive a White Bride’s album with 20   8” x 10” prints. 

        # 4: Bride's Portrait Session:  We meet at one of Austin’s many beautiful locations for your bridal portrait session. I shoot between 75 and 100 photographs of you in your wedding dress. You will receive one 4” x 6” print of every photo taken  You keep all of these prints. Then, you select the photograph you like best from the session and you will receive one 16” x 20” print of your favorite bridal portrait mounted and framed. Usually this print is displayed at the entrance to the reception or beside the wedding cake. After the wedding, the bride’s mother usually grabs this picture and stores it for safekeeping at her house.
 
        #5:  Engagement Session:   We meet at any favorite location of yours (like, where he proposed) for an engagement portrait session. I shoot from 50 to 60 pictures of the two of you-together. The objective is to capture some of the wonderful warmth that flows between an engaged couple. The purpose of the engagement session is to provide a treasure for your family.  Again, you will receive all of the small prints.  Then you select your favorite for one 11” x 14” print of your favorite photo framed and mounted, ready to display at the wedding.  

        #6: Your parents each select a favorite picture from any part of the wedding and they will receive a framed 5"x7" print.
 
        #7: You will receive three CDs of digital files of all the still photography (one for you and one for each set of parents). Once you have the digital files on a CD, you can have beautiful prints made for pennies per print. I will tell you where to get professional quality prints for pennies. 
    This means you can give prints to everyone in your wedding party and your family. Or, you can email pictures to anyone you choose. When you own your own wedding images, you are in control of how much you spend for more pictures.
 
You get everything above for only $1,850. 

Remember,you can purchase the wedding coverage alone for only $1,250  if you choose.

Additional Options:
 
        #1:  Full Video Coverage for $1,450.  You will receive three copies of the final DVD, (Guess who wants the other two?) 

        #2:  A 30-page Renaissance album filled with your favorite photos and sizes for $700. (You can also get an art leather album for the same price, if you prefer.) In my opinion these are the two best wedding albums manufactured in the United States. 

         Please call or e-mail to check on availability for your date. Prices subject to change without notice.   

                                                   Wedding Photography  

(If your uncle Albert is doing your wedding photography, you can ask him to follow this roadmap. You will be glad you did.) 

        There are several things you should understand clearly about wedding photography and wedding video. The first and most important is that Your wedding day is a great photo opportunity, but it is not a photo session!! 

         If you allow anyone to turn your wedding into a photo session, you will regret it later, even if many beautiful pictures are taken. A photo session is totally under the control of a photographer. The photographer carefully arranges everything in order to get high-quality, striking and, beautiful pictures. You may have been at a wedding where the photographer took control of everything right away and posed everyone at every step for the entire wedding. Thousands of weddings have been done in just this manner. Beautiful wedding albums can be created with this method. Actually, beautiful and boring albums might be more accurate. Set-up pictures (pre-planned poses), never capture the charm and fun and excitement of your individual wedding. There is a lot of spontaneous activity at every wedding, and pre-planned, canned poses do not capture any of it. Carefully planned poses copied from a manual on how to shoot wedding pictures all have this in common. After you have seen them three or four times, they become completely meaningless and very dull 

        Here is the key item. Your wedding day is your day.  It is not the photographer's day. This is the day that you have dreamed of and planned and fantasized about for most of your life. It is a day you want to experience completely and fully. It is a day for you to cry and laugh and play and be solemn and serious and giggle and whoop and scream and kick up your heels. In plain and ordinary terms, this is the day you want to have a ball! 

        This is not the day you want to spend time posing under the direction of some stranger with a camera and a list. It is your day, and your fiancée’s, day, and, this is a day to live, not pose endlessly according to some list of “ideal” wedding photographs.

If you allow your wedding to become a photo session, here is what will happen. You will arrive at your wedding excited and happy. You will be ready for a great and exciting day. Then you will pose for pictures according to a list for five minutes (or maybe 15). After this little photo session, you will be slightly less excited and happy. The flow of your wedding has been interrupted by the list. Soon, you will be directed into another posing session for another five to 15 minutes, again going down a list. Once more the flow of your wedding has stopped. After the third or fourth photo session, still long before the actual ceremony, you start to get tired of this stuff. After all, you want to be with your friends having fun. Right? But the posing doesn't stop. On and on and on, your wedding is directed by the list. By the time your wedding is over, you will wish you could wrap that list around the photographer's camera and hit him over the head with it. After you and the groom depart, you will realize that you didn't have nearly as much fun at your wedding as you expected, and you are just relieved to get away. That will be because you really did not have a wedding; you had a photo session. 
        Worse, when you get the pictures, you will have a book full of pictures that are well-composed poses that are mostly pretty to look at, but these carefully posed pictures shot from the same list that is used at every other wedding make your wedding look just like every other wedding. No list captures the fun and happiness and excitement of your wedding. 
        So, what is important? Somebody's list or your exciting, happy, tearful, hysterical, funny, wonderful wedding. Which do you want? 

                                            What I do at your wedding:  

ARRIVAL: I arrive 90 minutes before the ceremony. I like to be set up and ready so I can take pictures as soon as the wedding party arrives. If the cakes are set up at this location, I like to get pictures of them immediately. If there are any unusual decorations, I get pictures of these as well.

When you arrive, I begin taking pictures of you immediately. You have no idea what it will be like when you arrive at your very own wedding. But whatever happens when you show up, it will make for a great picture right away. This is a fun time. After months of preparation, it is really happening. It is exciting and chaotic. It is smiles and tears all jumbled together. My job is to capture some of this excitement and chaos. I cannot get it all, but I get all I can. I do not stop the bride or the groom and try to get posed pictures at this point. I just shoot what is there and happening.

GETTING READY: Soon the bride and her bridesmaids disappear into the bride's room to get ready. The tempo is picking up now, and the bride's mother and others are usually racing against time as they get the place ready for the ceremony or the reception or both. Again, I do not pose people doing these things; I just get pictures of whatever they are doing.

PORTRAITS ON THE RUN: I do get what I call portraits on the run. They are not organized sessions, just a “Hi, look here, click, thank you” and it is done. The groom's dressing room can be bedlam or solemn. I shoot it the way it is. When the gentlemen come out, I shoot them as a casual group after they get their flowers. At this point, I go for a good portrait of the groom.

BRIDE IN HER DRESS: By now, you will be ready for the photographer. In the bride's room I get small group shots. If your father comes in and puts a penny in your shoe, that will be a posed shot. Even so, if you (or your dad) start crying, I will get that for sure, and it will make a fantastic photograph. Don't think that does not happen. Remember, the things that are not planned provide the most spectacular and moving pictures, the ones you treasure later. Promise. If there is space in the bride's room, I get casual group shots of the bride and the bridesmaids.  I will also take photographs of your mother helping you with your veil or hair as you are doing the finishing touches. 

                                        Suddenly, it's time. It's really time!

THE CEREMONY: This is a good time to make a point about churches and photographers. Most churches have been forced to establish restrictions for photographers. I always ask what the rules are. I do not violate any of their rules. The bride needs to find out what her church's rules are so she is not terribly disappointed later. I have been to churches where there was a rule that there would be no pictures of any kind taken during the ceremony. I had a priest tell me that he didn't want to see me in the church during the ceremony. Other churches require that the photographer stay in the last pew (farthest away). In a large church, that is a long, long way from the ceremony. Find out what your restrictions will be. If you are told that the photographer must stay 150 feet away from the ceremony, immediately tell them your photographer is very discreet and will not disturb the ceremony and needs to be closer to get the pictures you want. Most restrictions on photography can be eased if you confront the issue when you book the site (before you pay the money). It is too late after the wedding starts. Check this out.  

AFTER THE WEDDING: After the ceremony, the families on both sides want a variety of family pictures. Tell your mother and your groom's mother that they don't have to be bashful. They can tell me what they want, and I will get the pictures.

We will get the following pictures for sure: 
        Bride and groom 
        Bride, groom, and minister 
        Bride and maid of honor 
        Bride and bridesmaids 
        Groom and bridesmaids 
        Groom and best man 
        Bride, groom, and all attendants 
        Family groups on both sides 
        Specialty shots requested by the bride, groom, and their parents 
        Group shot of everyone on all sides 

        It does not take that long to get all the pictures you want. Usually, I'm done in less than 30 minutes. Unfortunately, there is often someone there who feels that it is their job to rush everyone out the church. Assign your father or someone who can be polite and firm to handle any discussions with anyone trying to cut your time short. It is your wedding and you are paying a lot of money. Do not allow anyone to interfere with your wedding for their convenience. 

        Lots of funny and touching things can happen while we shoot the formals (also called wedding party pictures or altar returns). If something happens, I try to catch it. Actually, this goes for the entire wedding and reception. When I have taken all the pictures I can think of, I ask you, your mother, and your husband's mother if there are any other pictures of their family they would like to get. When you say enough, we are done. If there is a formal departure, like in a limo, I shoot that, then race to the reception if it is at a different location. 

        Feel free to tell everyone to bring their cameras and their camcorders. Your family and friends are welcome to take pictures as I shoot the formals. The only thing I insist upon is that they take their pictures after I get my shot. I will be happy to step aside and let your family and friends get any shot after I have taken mine. It is common for eight to 10 people to be standing right behind me, and each one getting everything I set up. I encourage this, so let them know. 

        WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE RECEPTION: At the reception, there are plenty of opportunities to get pictures of family and friends. The main events are presented here, not as a list, but as the key points I develop with a variety of pictures. Lots of things happen that you do not have planned. I try to get whatever photographs show the fun and flavor of your day.
 
        Cakes and presents (if not taken already) 
        Bride portrait area/sign-in area Introduction of the newlyweds 
        The buffet 
        Table shots 
        First dance 
        Bride and father’s dance 
        Groom and mother’s dance 
        Toasts 
        Cutting of the cake 
        Bouquet toss 
        Garter toss     
        Departure

As you depart, your wedding day begins slipping into memory. It is hard to believe that at the moment, but it is true. 

        My job is to capture some of the excitement confusion, chaos, and beauty of this very short and passionate day. That is what I do. And I love to do it. And, if I do my job well, you will love the pictures, your daughters will love the pictures, and your great, great, great, great granddaughters will love them too.   

Regardless of who does your wedding, remember that it's your day.

I hope you have a very exciting and wonderful day. 
And I hope you live happily ever after.

Carl Platt
Platt Photography
cwplatt@quikus.com
512-825-5227 

On the next page you will find a small sample of a few of my favorite pictures.