Grand Rapids Wedding Review

Hello Everyone.  I had a wonderful weekend wedding in Grand Rapids and I wanted to blog a bit about the day. 

First of all, the couple, Allison and Craig, the family, and friends were awesome and very hospitable.  I enjoyed every second that I had with them all.  We made fantastic images and I am excited about them.

The Wedding took place at Mayflower Congregational Church in Grand Rapids.  This church is fantastic!  The images are just perfect from here because they have a very nice sanctuary, chapel, arboretum, and outdoor setting.  The only thing that I did not like was that they would not allow me to be in the church during the service.  That meant that I got no isle shots of the bride and the wedding processional except from behind.  Kind of a bummer but it is their rule and I obey.  I did get a bunch of images from the balcony but just not the same emotions.  I made up for this before and after the ceremony with lots of energy, emotional, and personality-filled images!

The couple had a fantastic orange convertible volkswagen bug that was really cool.  We made many unique images in a short time with the car.  They will be really excited to see these images!  It was a nice touch and made for a cool prop.

The flowers were by Eastern Floral and Design in Grand Rapids.

A great job once again with the flowers and design.  I really like the fact that their flowers are always fresh, don’t die, and they have a nice cloth attached to the flowers that the girls can tamp the flowers with to get the water off of them.  Little touches like that save time on a wedding day.  Great job, highly recommended!

The ceremony was captured by Ring King Studios from Grand Rapids.  They were only allowed to shoot from the balcony too.  They shot with two cameras.  I haven’t seen their work so I am neutral.  Nice people though.

The Photographer was myself, Paul Retherford Wedding Photography and I think that he/I/me is awesome, and by the emails and comments that I got on the wedding day the family and bride and groom love my work and my personality and professionalism.

The wedding reception in Grand Rapids, Michigan was held at the University Club on Lyon Street in Grand Rapids.  Awesome, cool, nice staff, great spot, highly recommended site for smaller weddings.  I think there were about 150 there.  They invited 200ish.  They have more space to expand but the tables were a bit close and it was tough getting through, especially for me with gear in hand.  The dance floor is nice sized and there is a nice seating room in an adjacent room too.  The windows are floor to ceiling and have great views of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The DJ was Drew from Fun 1 DJs.  He is a cool cat and fun to with at weddings.  I have had the pleasure of working with him a number of times and it is always great.  He ALWAYS keeps the dance floor hopping!  The is awesome for me.  He is very reasonable in price, I think too reasonable, and is professional and fun.

Wedding song was “Everything” by Michael Buble.  I love this song and think that anyone who is getting married should consider this for themselves. 

Wedding colors were brown and light blue.  Very subtle and classy colors which work great in images with their beautiful flowers!

The only thing that I would have liked to have changed was the amount of time after the ceremony that was allotted for photography.  We really had zero time and we were rushed to get to the reception.  That is why I am kind of in the middle ground as to if a bride and groom should see each other prior to the ceremony and get all of the images completed.  It really makes the day flow easy and we have time to make all of the images that I would like.  I still made a lot of images, around 4600 during the day, of which they will receive over 4000 images!  They will be stoked!

If you haven’t seen their slide show yet check it out in the blog below, cool stuff!

Visit my Grand Rapids Wedding Photography website at www.PaulShotMyWedding.com