With shocking news coming out of Western Australia this week of a major wedding business going out of business and leaving clients out of pocket and without their precious memories, it’s a great time to remind everyone that glossy marketing, flashy premises and all the promises in world are worthless without business ethics, trust and honesty!
Clever marketing can sell almost anything, including dreams, but it can all be an illusion. You won’t see us with an enormous flashy stand at the big bridal expos (though you would have done a few years ago - and we were in all the magazines too!), and we don’t pay a fortune to be on the front page of Google searches either, though we used to do that too! The reason we don’t do any of those things anymore is that we have to pass those costs on to our clients - and believe us, those costs are massive! Doing that would increase the costs of our packages significantly, which would be bad for you, our clients, but there’s also another important reason - and that’s that we want clients who are prepared to dig a little deeper than the front page of Google to find a supplier who is truly right for them. We want our clients to take the time to look around and decide what they want without the "book us now" pressure of a promo-person at an expo.
What you will find out, if you take that time to take a look at us, is that we have been creating memories for hundreds of happy couples for over 15 years, 13 of those right here in South-East Queensland. We’re not some flash-in-the-pan outfit, out to make a huge profit in a couple of years and disappear (and believe us - we’ve seen so many ‘businesses’ like that come and go over the years). No, we want to create lasting relationships with our customers so that they invite us back into their lives at all the important occasions.
You’ll also discover that it actually will be us photographing or filming your day, not some third-party contractor being paid a pittance to capture imagery that’s then sent overseas to a production house sweatshop for finishing. That doesn’t work for us - we shoot it and we edit it so you get the absolute truest memories from your most special of days. The fact that we shoot and edit all our own work limits the number of weddings we shoot and we try to keep to a maximum of around 35-50 major weddings per year in order to be able to deliver incredible service to every single client.
Even better is that service like this, delivered with passion and expertise, doesn’t cost the earth. We love what we do and we know how incredibly privileged we are to be able to do something we love as our jobs and that is why our pricing is so reasonable and there are options for almost every couple. Oh, and we hate up-sell too, so you really won’t be expected to pay $10,000 for an album after the big day! The price you sign up for is all you’ll ever need to pay and we’re happy to see you take your images away (although we do make really beautiful albums too).
Another thing you'll notice is that the imagery we share is from actual real-life weddings, not styled shoots. You won't find us doing many collaborative shoots and the reason for this is simple - we just don't need to! We have literally millions of images to choose from and new weddings to share every month, so we don't have the need, nor the time to have staged shoots in the mix. You will occasionally see imagery from shoots we have done with partners like The Wedding Alley and from our commercial gigs, but 99% of the time you're seeing real couples having the most wonderful days on their real-life wedding day.
Another thing you'll notice is that the imagery we share is from actual real-life weddings, not styled shoots. You won't find us doing many collaborative shoots and the reason for this is simple - we just don't need to! We have literally millions of images to choose from and new weddings to share every month, so we don't have the need, nor the time to have staged shoots in the mix. You will occasionally see imagery from shoots we have done with partners like The Wedding Alley and from our commercial gigs, but 99% of the time you're seeing real couples having the most wonderful days on their real-life wedding day.
The business that was wound up in WA was liquidated because they had a $350,000 tax bill. The initial Consumer Protection reports suggest around $400,000 in undelivered goods and deposits, most of which will be at risk due to the tax debt! The only way a wedding business can have achieved bookings at that level is through massive glossy campaigns and marketing and high prices, yet potentially hundreds of couples are now without their memories or their deposits. That sounds like a pretty badly run, profit-driven business who didn’t care about their customers. We do! Every single client is precious to us and we deliver everything we promise, every time. Trust and honesty are such small words, but they are our rock and our anchor and the best reason why you should trust us with your memories.
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