Dunblane Hydro is a beautiful venue with many opportunities for photography both in the grounds and within the hotel itself. We were spoilt for choice and used the drawing room and the staircase as the backdrop to these images.

Many thanks to Jen for modelling the dresses for us.

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography
Dresses – Pamela Jayne Bridal
Flowers – C & D Weddings
Venue – Dunblane Hydro

Good luck Laura from your friends at Focus Wedding Photography!

It really doesn’t feel like a year ago, time flies. I hope that it has been a great year for you guys and I hope that we get the chance to catch up very soon.

Happy anniversary!

Today we wanted to share some images from their pre-wedding shoot at Fingask, looking forward to seeing you soon and being part of your wedding.

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography
Venue – Fingask Castle

Images from the shoot have been featured on Brides Up North blog today

Many congratulations on the achievement of becoming a candidate Laura and good luck on the show!

Lorna & Adrian

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography
Model – Laura Hogg
Dress – Laura Reece Bridal
Hair – Jane Crawford
Make up – Leigh Blaney

Truly scrumptious make gorgeous cakes – fact! They are very talented (and award winning) cake designers based in Linlithgow in West Lothian. We took some images of their cakes at the show and loved their farm themed wedding cake and their cupcakes are gorgeous! We are always very pleased to see them at a show to sample their cakes!

Simply Bridesmaids is a new shop in Edinburgh and we met them for the first time at the Marine Hotel show. They had brought with them a lovely selection of dresses some of which are in our images below.

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography

Choosing your photographer is an important decision, one that needs to be considered. We wanted to share with you questions that we frequently get asked and offer you some of our tips for choosing one….

- choose someone you like! It is so important on your wedding day to feel comfortable in front of them and their camera.

- Pay for a professional. We been asked many, many times to look at photographs taken by a friend or relative with a new camera who has not been able to operate it or work with the challenging lighting that a wedding brings. Along with your new partner and your memories of the day, the photographs are the part of the day that lasts and it is definitely worth investing in a professional photographer.

- Ask to see the images from a complete wedding, check for consistency and that you like the style of photography that they are presenting. We would be delighted to share with you passwords from some of our online galleries and show you some printed preview albums so you can see how our images look in print.

- Are they insured? Have they got regularly serviced equipment? Do they work alone or as part of a team? What happens if they are ill? Have they got back up? Focus are fully insured photographers, we regularly service and update our equipment. We work with a team of photographers we have worked with for a long time which means all of our images are of a consistent high quality and our team approach means that missing a wedding for us is never an options!

- Two cameras are better than one. We send two photographers to our weddings to make sure that we capture the special moments of the day from different angles, it gives you a great selection of images to chose from when designing your album. The lead photographer stays with the couple recording group shots while our second shooter assists with lighting and equipment and takes reportage and detail shots to ensure that the day is beautifully recorded.

- Can they do a pre-wedding shoots for you? It is so important that you feel comfortable on your wedding day having your photograph taken. At Focus we encourage all of our couples to have a complimentary pre-wedding shoot. You’ll get lots of great tips from the photographer on posing and feeling comfortable in front of the camera. The images can be used on a gorgeous signing board for your wedding day which can make a great alternative to a traditional guest book.

- Digital copies of the photographs, if this is important to you discuss it with your photographer. Check whether the images will be watermarked and whether they will be high resolution. It is also worth checking the maximum size the image can be printed at.

- Can I have copyright of the images? Copyright always stays with the photographer, it is a bit like an artist drawing a picture, you can buy a copy of it but the right to reproduce the picture always remains with the artist. We give our disks with reproduction rights which means that you can print the high resolution images for your own personal use.

- Have they shot at the venue before? We get asked this a lot! To be honest as long as we have visited before with our couple and met the hotel staff it really doesn’t matter. We love shooting in new venues and are more than happy to shoot in ones we have already been to!

- If a wedding album is being designed for you, check with your photographer the process that this takes, can you choose all of the images? How many go into an album? How many proof albums will they design for you or alterations to the original proof? A wedding album is sourced from a professional printing lab is of much better quality than those available from online photo companies. If you are wanting to preserve your album as an heirloom it is worth investing in a quality album that will last. We have sourced the highest quality handmade albums which are beautiful and can be customised to our client’s requirements.

- How long will the photographer shoot for and how many images can you expect to get? It is also worth asking about group shots, how many they recommend and how long they will take? If we have shot the full wedding you can expect at least 300 beautifully mastered images from your day. We are happy to work with you on timings for your day to ensure that photography fits in beautifully.

- Cost – like everything in life you get what you pay for! A lot of people think that photographers just turn up on their wedding day but there is a lot more to it. We spend many hours on each wedding from doing pre-wedding consultations, shoots, scoping venues, the time for the photographers on the day, travel to and from the venue to post processing, wedding album design and client meetings. It is definitely worth checking out how much time your photographer will spend with you. We invest time as quality is of such importance to us, we want to exceed your expectations and for you to fall in love with your wedding images.

There are of course lots of other questions that you can ask your photographer but these we have found to be the most frequent asked of us, we are happy to answer any others you may have, just contact us through our email or by phone – we would love to add some focus to your wedding!

The course was a fantastic day, many thanks to the lovely people at Aspire. It is really important to us to keep developing our skills so the course was a wonderful opportunity to get together with other photographers and practice, practice, practice!

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography

Photography – Focus Wedding Photography
Event – Thee Wedding Day Out, Crowne Plaza, Glasgow

We are official photographers at Thee Wedding Show‘s upcoming events in March 2012 at George Square in Glasgow and Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.

Lorna