Hello lovely couples and wedding vendors. Some of you might have seen that I took my recertification to become a Certified Wedding Planner through The Bridal Society, which is the leading Wedding Planning Certification Program in the world, and the largest membership of Certified Wedding Planners & Venues. I was also recently chosen to be an Ambassador for this amazing community. At The Bridal Society, we know how important hiring an educated Wedding Planner or Coordinator is. I wanted to interview a wedding professional who I know advocates for this with her couples who hire her as their photographer.
Meet Jami owner of Captured by Jami Photography
I've had the pleasure of working with Jami many times and every time I do she makes my job easier. I've always been a BIG believer that the vendors you choose for your wedding day need to mesh well. When I see a couple that has chosen Jami as their wedding photographer I know their day will go smoothly and beautifully. Jami loves working with wedding planners, so I thought I'd ask her a few questions as to why a Certified Wedding Planner is important for couples to hire.
What inspired you to become a photographer?
I had never really intended on becoming a professional photographer. It's one of those things that you hear other people do, but it seems impossible for yourself. After 6 years as a medical assistant I was experiencing serious burnout, so I took a break, I did photography on the side because I enjoyed it so much and things just started to snowball. Suddenly a dream became a reality. Tell us about your work, your style you like to capture and how long you’ve been in the wedding industry? I am a people centered photographer. My goal is to give my clients the best visual preservation of life's biggest moments. I have been serving clients with bright, bold, and genuine images professionally since 2017.
Being in the wedding industry since 2017, tell us why you love to work with certified wedding planners?
Weddings can often turn into a "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario. You've got a lot of vendors, with a lot of opinions, and they tend to be focused on what suits their field the best. Sometimes the couples best interest gets lost. That's where your wedding planner comes in. They are ring master of the circus that is wedding planning. Additionally, in my experience as a photographer, if there isn't a wedding planner a lot of that responsibility falls on me. Which is not in my job description. We end up getting lots of questions that don't pertain to photography, such as; "What do you think looks best?", "How should we style things?", "Can you show the other vendors where to deliver their items". Your wedding vendors are wanting so badly to help, but we also do you a disservice when our attention is pulled elsewhere. Do you have an experience you can share where a CWP wasn't hired and you wish there had been?
Yes, my own wedding. We counted on friends and family to help us pull our wedding together. Everyone truly did an amazing job, and we are so appreciative. Looking back, our friends and family did so much to help make our wedding day a success, I wish we would have returned the favor by splurging a little and making it so they could fully enjoy our wedding as guests, instead of "vendors". Also, we had borrowed chair covers from a friend of a friend, and unfortunately, they were put into large black garbage bags and thrown away at the end of the night. I was so embarrassed to call this sweet person who had trusted me with her inventory and it had gotten lost. I know for a fact, had we had a wedding coordinator, that never would have happened.
Thank you so much Jami for taking the time to answer these questions.
Check out some of the amazing work we've done together!