Monday 1 August 2011

{Win Your Wedding Photography} And The Winner IS.....

On 11th April, I had a bit of an Idea. I had seen another photographer do something similar in Ireland, so I decided that I wanted to do a {Win Your Wedding Photography} Competition. I decided how it would work, got the marketing material together and launched it some 20days later.


1st May was the opening for entries. People had to email in to tell us why they thought they should win the pacakge that I had put together - and it was open for 2months. Including the wedding fayres that I was exhibiting at.


The entries came in, some for dates I was already booked which I had to turn down. And some for dates that were not within the competition dates I was running.


In the end we had 10 couples to be short listed down to three. This was going to be hard. I couldn’t do it myself, so I drafted in some of the people I speak with on Twitter to help me choose and decide. This was done on a “Eurovision” style voting. Meaning people were marked out of 10 to 1, and the 3 with the most votes were the short listed couples.


And that’s how we were born. A couple had already decided to book their photographers as they didn’t want to miss out (and these were people that got short listed) so our 3rd place changed 3times!
Our three were launched Samantha & Daniel, Amy & Chris and Kalie & Claire.


I did a small photo shoot with each couple to find out how they photographed and also so that I could use the images when the Winner was announced.

We opened the voting on 1st July, open until midnight on 31st July 2011 and the winner to be announced today…3 months after the competition was announced.

We have had over 1200 votes, with some duplicates meaning the final total was 1132 votes. The votes were per email address. All duplicated emails were deleted.

At one point one couple were some 300 votes ahead, but big pushes from everyone meant that the final voting came down to 31 votes between 1st and 2nd place.

The winner, with 46.9% of the votes (523) is….


























Amy & Chris



I want to say a big well done to Samantha & Daniel (43%) and Kalie & Claire (10.1%) for entering the competition and doing so well to get the votes that you have had. And I look forward to speaking with you regarding your respective Weddings to see if Blue Lights Photography can help you in any way.

Lets have a look at some of the photographs taken of Amy & Chris and a bit more of their story.

Amy & Chris met in Whitley Bay on August Bank Holiday 2005 through mutual friends, and thats how it all started. (Chris wasnt actually going to go "with the lads" so this could have all worked out differently!)






The are getting married on Christmas Eve at Tankersley Manor, Barnsley. With a Ceremony at 1pm and then onto their Wedding Breakfast and the Evening Reception.

They do not know anyone who has got married on Christmas Eve before, so it is unique to them. And a venue they had seen suggested it. (but not the venue they actually booked)





Chris proposed to Amy, when they had just purchased their first house, and she was pregnant with their now eldest daughter Jessica. The time just felt right to make this little family complete.







They are having a small wedding with just 30 close family and friends. They say choosing to stick to having a small number of guests made the decision some of the planning easier.




Amy and Chris were the first couple to email in to the {Win Your Wedding Photography Competition} so they have had an agonising 3months of waiting and I know for Amy some times of it has been stressful.

Her origional email stated:
My name is Amy. Me and my partner Chris are getting married on the 24th December 2011 at Tankersly Manor, Barnsley. We think we should win because we need a helping hand towards our Wedding. We have two young children and a mortgage and have been struggling to afford a good photographer. Chris is currently working three different jobs in an attempt to pay off this wedding without getting into too much debt. Thanks for this opportunity.


I asked them also what would winning the competition mean to them:
Winning this competition would mean a lot like it would do for all the couples, not just the cost of it as this would take a lot of stress off us, but having a well known professional photographer looking after the one day you will always look back on and the one day you could never buy back as it only happens the once.


Well congratulations Amy & Chris.
You've WON!

3 comments:

  1. Wonderful news! Congrats Chris and Amy - I wish you all the best for the big day xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. The most beautiful couple won Congratulations both of you xxxx

    ReplyDelete

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