We wanted to share with you a little bit more about our business practices and beliefs. If you are looking for answers to general questions about our pricing, travel policy, etc. please view our Q & A.
1. We believe that wedded bliss outweighs the importance of the wedding day. That said, we genuinely love weddings because of what they really stand for. Yes, your wedding should be awesome, but your marriage is what it’s all about!
2. We are accepting, friendly, welcoming, and non-prejudicial whether it comes to sexual orientation, race, appearance, affiliation, and so on. It actually bothers us that we even have to put this in here, but sadly not everyone works or lives under this belief. We want you to feel comfortable with us. We give you the opportunity to meet us to see if we “click” but other than that, we love you already! Your wedding is your wedding. It’s not about us, it’s about you. Are you eloping? Having a destination wedding? Having a small wedding? Going to a courthouse? Doing a huge, elaborate party? We take photos that are unique to your personality and capture your unique moments.
3. We encourage our couples to create meaningful details rather than trendy ones. We love to photograph emotion, real moments, and unique-to-you wedding components. We don’t purposefully shoot weddings because they are blog fodder, and we love blogs that love moments over “cute stuff”.
4. We are a 2-for-the-price-of-1 package deal that aims for a consistent style and vision. We love what we do and are dedicated to this “job”. Whichever of the JayLee photographers you work with, it is really important to us that you connect with our brand, and in our opinion- two awesome, experienced shooters is the way to go. That way, no moment is missed.
5. We have gone through the whole wedding thing…so we know what you’re going through. After we (Josh and Ali) went through the process of being in front of the lens ourselves and choosing vendors, our filter is pretty good when it comes to treating our clients with honesty, respect and fairness. It matters. We want to help you with more than wedding photos, if you need it. Need suggestions on vendors? Advice? Someone to listen? We are here. Our brand is what it is right now because of what we learned from our wedding planning experience!
6. We have high standards for our photos. So, we spend time on your photos. We give you quality images and we don’t miss key moments or spur of the moment ones. We don’t batch edit or have other people edit our images for us. We oversee the whole process because we love it. Every edit is hand-touched, styled, and sent to you in full-resolution. Your photos are…yours. We don’t charge for editing. We don’t charge per photo. We give you all the good ones.
7. We are the little black dress of wedding photography. We try to be innovative and current while still producing photos that are long-lasting. We strive for fresh, vibrant, awesome, unique and beautiful photos above “cool for now” ones. After doing this a while, we’ve watched trends come and go (remember the neon green grass that was popular for a while?). For that reason, we personally don’t use overdone coloration, overused pre-sets, or tilt-shift/fish-eye. Trends are just that…and we don’t want to be the shoulder pads of wedding photography (cool until they just…aren’t). We push ourselves to create contemporary photos without doing what’s popular with photographers that season. We are so nerdy that we get inspiration for how to frame a shot while watching movies, looking at fashion magazines, and going to the museum. We have created our own style that we consider “JayLee” so our clients know what they are signing up for.
8. We want you to choose us, but if you don’t that’s okay. When clients trust our vision, we do a happy dance and we produce our best work. But before we do that, we listen to what clients want from us and from their photos. We put our clients’ happiness first: Making sure we are the right fit is more important than trying to “sell” you. If you don’t think it feels right, it’s probably not. If we don’t think we are what you’re looking for, we will tell you. This is really, really important to us. We want to click with you, blend in with your wedding party and give you an awesome experience overall.
9. We are hard-working but fun. One of our new clients was a guest at his friend’s wedding who referred him to us. At his client meeting he said, “Man. You were working HARD out there.” We try to maintain the balance between staying out of the way as much as possible and being pretty fun when we are more in-your-face taking pictures. Our couples never notice (because they are doing important things like getting married – and we are ninjas), but, we are running our asses off. We are bobbing, hopping, squatting, weaving, and sweating. We work hard at this and we have fun at it. That said, while we are working hard, you don’t have to. Our sessions are casual and fun, and on wedding days we are just documenting you being you.
10. We want to make you JayLee Lifers. We love to make every interaction with our clients positive, fun, and as stress-free as possible. We see many of our clients as friends. We don’t want the last time we see you to be on your wedding day. Let us be your personal on-call photographers for when you get pregnant, have a baby, or adopt, or need family pictures, or to document a surprise party, or for the work Christmas party, your head-shots, your anniversary….yeah, you get the idea.
11. We believe in working a “job” you love… and we are thankful for ours. In fact, we will never stop being thankful for the people who hire us. Every time someone gives us a good review, a kind compliment, speaks well of us on a forum, encourages us to share their photos, or provides a direct referral, we are beaming and grateful. We are a small business in a sea of other small businesses, so our clients are our greatest asset. We feel lucky that we get to document your special life moments, during and beyond your wedding day.
-Team JayLee