Photography | Andrew Spencer Photography

Donegal House for a wedding

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Making wedding plans

Already we are at the end of June! Time to start making plans if you’re getting married later in the year or early next year.

It’s an exciting time, lots of choices and plenty of decisions.

This list is a helpful timeline for wedding planning.

More than 12 months before your wedding
- Look at dates and times for your wedding.
- Decide on the size, formality and setting of your wedding.
- Make a wedding and engagement budget.
- Reserve the locations for your wedding and reception.
- Meet with and book your wedding celebrant or clergy.
- Choose your wedding party and make sure everyone is up for the job.
- Choose your wedding rings.
- Make a preliminary guest list.
- Sort out your engagement party.
9–12 Months Before your wedding
- Sort your wedding dress.
- Book your photographer.
- Reserve a venue.
- Book your music or DJ.
- Arrange flowers with your florist.
- Sort out your wedding cake.
- Make gift choices.
- Sort accommodation for your guests.
- Plan your honeymoon.
6–9 Months Before
- Decide on menu choices.
- Sort out cars.
- Order your invitations.
- Check marriage licence.
3–6 Months Before
- Fine tune your guest list.
- Choose the reader for your ceremony.
- Decide on flowers with florist.
- Book the Guy’s suits
- Make plans for hair and hairdresser
- Make plans for makeup
2 Months Before
- Post the invites.
- Decide on your wedding vows or make your own.
- Finalise the menu.
- Confirm the wedding details with celebrant, musician.
- Purchase any gifts required.
- Make appointments for nails and make-up.
- Schedule dress fitting.
1 Month Before
- Marriage licence.
2 Weeks Before
- Have a Hens night and Stag do.
- Look at speeches.
- Finalise reception details.
- Call any guests who have not replied.
- Meet with your hairdresser and make-up artist for consultation.
- Deliver song lists to musician or playlists to DJ.
- Confirm honeymoon reservations.
In the Week before
- Sort seating plan.
- Determine the order of the day.
- Have a rehearsal.
- Confirm accommodation reservations.
- Pick up the suits for boys.
- Confirm the final numbers with caterer.
- Confirm details for cars.
- Deliver your marriage licence to celebrant.
- Make a seating plan for the reception and write out place cards.
- Choose someone to return any rented items after the wedding.
- Write any cheques required for the wedding day.
- Pack for your honeymoon.
On the Day
- Give the rings to the best man.
- Have fun on your special day!

Why Donegal House is good

Donegal House is steeped with local history and has a unique welcoming and relaxed Irish atmosphere unrivalled in New Zealand. With your very own self contained Irish Stone Cottage set in 6 acres of tranquil gardens & lakes you can have the wedding of your dreams with your friends & family.

Accommodation

Donegal House is Bed & Breakfast accommodation with 29 ensuite rooms.

Menu choices

Donegal have a variety of menu options to suit your needs, budget and numbers. From buffet style, set menu to finger food they will work with you to choose the best option for your day.

Small wedding or large wedding

The Stone cottage at Donegal has an Irish theme in décor and features impressive macracarpa tables that will seat over 100 guests with room to add extra tables for numbers up to 150. Depending on the style of wedding you are looking for they can cater for larger numbers and also have 10 round tables available for you to use, popular for the smaller weddings.

Entertainment

Depending on the style and atmosphere you are aiming for, Donegal have a sound system you are welcome to use for CD’s, DVD’s during dinner and to connect a laptop computer through. For after dinner entertainment if you are looking for a party atmosphere & dancing they recommend a Band or DJ. Plenty of room to boogie into the night.

Visit Donegal House website

Posted in Around Kaikoura, Wedding | No Comments »

Kaikoura Wedding in NZ Bride & Groom magazine

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

NZ Bride & Groom May – July edition has a nice wee story about a bit of fun Charlotte, Michael and I had the day after their wedding.

Charlotte and Mike are outdoor activities folk and we thought it would be cool to include some outdoor aspects in a relaxing Sunday afternoon shoot with no wedding day deadlines to meet.

We headed out to the shoreline at Oaro and let our imaginations run wild with diving gear, a boat and even a retro lawn tractor we came across on the way to the beach. All good fun and the guys got to get dressed up twice. The flowers even got another round of being flowers.

Grab your copy and check out the story Bride & Groom mag.

Posted in Wedding | 1 Comment »

A Ford Thunderbird Kaikoura wedding with the Canon 7D

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Crikey, that’s a bit of a mouth full of blog title. Read on, the post is not as onerous as the title!

A fantastic, good fun and great looking wedding party, Kaikoura scenery and a Ford Thunderbird, now just how good can it get. Cars are a cool wedding accessory, especially when they have some attitude. Classic and red always works and I’m lucky to get more than my share of kick ass wedding cars at wedding days. This weekend was the usual weekend treat. The wedding party were great fun, there were a few of them though and I had to do a quick head count each time before setting into a group shoot! The great thing about a large wedding party is that there is always someone coming up with an inspirational crazy fun idea for us to photograph and the ideas kept on coming this weekend and we soon ran out of time.

Canon 7D review update.

My Canon 7D has had a good shake down now, shot many thousands of images, been used every day since I took delivery and displaced the 1 series Canons that I have in my arsenal. My faithful 1DsII has come back from the Canon hospital with a brand new shutter, I’ve used it for one job but it’s big and heavy, the AF isn’t as snappy as the 7D. There always seems to be dust on the sensor no matter how often I get it cleaned and although the files are always crisp and clean and colour accurate, for the work I do the 7D files are perfect and I’m going to have this damned thing worn out in no time at all.

With my style of photography I choose to shoot in manual mode all the time which means I cannot comment on the metering capabilities of the 7D.

I’ve shot several hundred portrait shots with studio light in jpeg and found the histogram to be accurate for good file results.

I’ve used the 7D for weddings since I got it and I’m loving it.

Why I like the 7D for wedding photography.

Mostly for the reasons I outlined in the first review, but to reiterate:

Ergonomics and handling, including the weight compared to a 1 series Canon.

Big, bright viewfinder.

Snappy AF, works great in low light and with a Speed light is brilliant.

Performance (shoot rate)

Canon 7D workflow

There still seems to be some hiccups with the 7D workflow.

The Canon supplied software is not really an option for a professional workflow, although it produces quite nice files it is too clunky and slow for high volume use.

My 7D workflow at the moment goes like this;

Photo Mechanic for ingestion, selection, file naming, IPTC and Ex if meta-data.

RAW Developer for processing of RAW files to JPG usable files.

Adobe LightRoom for fast cropping, applying effects and cataloguing files.

Photoshop for any major editing or effects.

I convert all files to jpg with an sRGB profile straight from the RAW file unless it is some super duper image that I want to do a heap of work to. It is pointless to clutter your system with huge tiff files with Adobe RGB files when 99% of the worlds printers do a perfect job of printing with an sRGB profile and a jpg file with a compression of around 10.

In conclusion

Isn’t it so cool to every day be able to use the most amazing, cutting edge technology that mankind has devised! When I look back 10 short years to using film cameras compared to the most incredible technology and image quality we now have available I have to think that everything is just so perfect and how can we ever complain about the shortcomings of the amazing equipment we have.