Insights and a Thank you
Last week, WeddingWire.com awarded us the Bride’s Choice award for 2011.
“The WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards ™ recognizes the top local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism. Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the organization, the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ are determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 750,000 WeddingWire newlyweds. The 2011 award recipients represent the top five percent of WeddingWire’s vendor community, which consists of over 200,000 local wedding professionals throughout the US and Canada.”
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I’m pretty excited and surprised to receive this recognition. I did do my best last year, but you see, here’s the insight to majority of my clients, both wedding and portrait clients… they are private people.
It’s been shared a lot in the wedding industry that a couple connects best with a photographer who they can relate to, especially when the photographer(s) will be by their side throughout their entire day, capturing their beautiful and precious moments for generations of reminiscing. Majority of the couples that I consult with, I find aspects of personality that I can connect and relate to. A lot of key words like: simple elegance, genuine, quiet, camera-shy comes up during discussion, and I know those are all words I’ve used planning our own wedding. But here’s the catch and the reason to my surprise for this award. Most of my couples, have very private web presence. They rarely leave comments, reviews, or testimonies on the web. Many have very little presence on even Facebook, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve never left a review on Amazon or Yelp. My husband, is just like that, and I’m only incrementally different.
So at an age when I hear tons of marketing through social media, I’ve sunken deep in my chair and pondered… what am I going to do? Many of my clients don’t even post pictures of themselves on their Facebook, and even ask me not to tag them… and that’s just who they are, and I respect them for it, but this isn’t good for business. So far, I don’t have an answer. Thankfully, a few of the clients have left reviews on WeddingWire and Yelp, and they’ve been raving reviews. I’m so thankful for these clients who took the time. Some who went to both sites and left reviews!!! You have no idea, how helpful these are, not only to my own encouragements, but for future clients researching me, as well as online search engines locating me.
One of the most encouraging advise I got last year was, be yourself, communicate who you are and where your passions come from, and rest assured-it’s okay to be yourself even if you feel pressured to be someone else. In a world of a lot of colorful, energetic photographers, I’ve often felt drained. Because you see, majority of the times that’s not me. I gravitate to soothing, elegant, calming things. If you gave me a choice, I’ll live somewhere quiet and far away, and travel to natural wonders and spa’s rather than parties and metropolitan centers. I’ll take soothing light classical music over a live concert almost any day… (well, except for Michael Buble, his concert was energetic and fun. 🙂 I’ll share about my introverted nature, but that’s another upcoming blog post.
So to my existing clients, this isn’t a complaint. This is more of a thank you, and that I respect your privacy. And despite your private lives, I thank you for inviting me in to capture those glances, and blushes.
To general readers and prospect clients, this is why you don’t see me jumping up and down on social media.
To my playful energetic clients, I’m only silly with those closest to me, but you were so fun, that I couldn’t stop laughing and hold the camera steady during our photo session. Thank you, 🙂
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