2020 Best Of | Wedding Photographer Northern Ireland
We went into 2020 full of excitement, for the first time since we have been in business, we had no option but to close our diary for the year early as we couldn’t accommodate any more bookings. When we first started photographing weddings, we had a list of venues we wanted to work at and 2020 would have been the year when we would tick of the last remaining few. 2020 for everyone involved in the wedding industry was expected to be the busiest year on record.
Unfortunately, everything changed very quickly once Coronavirus hit our shores early in the year. As it turned out in the end, because of the restrictions put in place by the government due to the pandemic, we lost over 85% of the work we had booked for 2020 due to cancellations. It has been a very difficult year for us, as it has been for most people. There can’t be many people who haven’t been impacted in some way by the current issues.
The wedding industry due to its nature has been impacted more than most and all of our friends in the industry have been going through the same thing as ourselves. We won’t pretend that the financial impact of losing over 85% of the work we had booked for the year has been an easy thing for us to deal with as it hasn’t been. More difficult even that that though has been everything else that has gone along with it, the uncertainty and the stress of dealing with all the issues around all those cancellations. It has been very difficult at times to remain positive in such an uncertain climate, but we have done our best. That is the last negative thing we will have to say about it from our own point of view, as we still have a lot to be thankful for and of course we know that nobody wants to listen to us complaining!
We are coming out of 2020 and into the new year and we are still here! We know many wedding vendors who have had no option but to give up and close their doors for good. We know wedding photographers that weren’t able to photograph a wedding in 2020 at all and we know many that have had to give up their coveted status as full-time professional wedding photographers to go part time so that they could supplement their income by working in other fields. We also know wedding vendors that haven’t been able to cope with the level of stress that 2020 brought and this has caused them to have issues with their mental health. Only other small business owners can understand how much of yourself, you put into your business and how devastating it is when due to no fault of your own at all things go wrong or become difficult.
We also need to thank some of our clients who without any encouragement from us at all went out of their way to support us. When it became obvious what the financial issues would be for those involved in the wedding industry, many wedding vendors, to help keep their business open, asked their clients to pay their balances on originally agreed dates while they moved their dates to far off in the future. We could and maybe should have done this ourselves but we were acutely aware that it was very likely that a large number of our couples would also be suffering financial hardship due to the pandemic, so we decided not to, so as not to put any further financial pressure on them. To our complete surprise a few of our couples insisted on paying balances early or on originally agreed dates by themselves, because they were aware enough to know that we would be finding the financial situation difficult and they simply wanted to help support us. Those couples have no idea how grateful we are to them. To think of us in the middle of all the upheaval around them having to move their wedding is a reflection of just how amazing these people are.
During the first lockdown period, we found it very difficult not being able to do the simple things that we normally take for granted. We love photographing people most of all and to have that taken away from us was difficult. With not being allowed due to the restrictions at the time to undertake unnecessary travel this stopped us from even being able to visit our favourite spots for landscape photography. To help ease our boredom we started a personal photography project were we simply took a photograph of something random each day. We decided to share these on our blog and were really surprised by the amount of interest it generated. As of today, well over 100,000 people have viewed the blog post. We found it being discussed on a few photography websites and even being used by other photographers as inspiration for their own lockdown projects. We even had couples get in touch with us about photographing their wedding, having only seen photographs from the blog post and none of our actual wedding work.
After the first lockdown things have still never really returned to any sort of normality in regards to weddings and various restrictions have been put in place ever since. All of the couples whose weddings we photographed after the first lockdown had to sacrifice some parts of their original plans that they didn’t want too. Many of these couples had to deal with multiple changes of date and in some cases a huge reduction in the number of guests they were allowed to have. However in a lot of ways this made these weddings more special and for us it meant that we were able to have more time alone with the couples than would be usual. Because we had that extra time, we could try new things, be more creative and the extra time also allowed us to get to know our couples better and we feel produce better images. We have a new found love of micro weddings!
Even while being restricted to producing a lot less work this year, we still have some success stories to share. We had images featured by a few online wedding blogs and we were also featured by the Belfast Telegraph in a story about the impact on wedding businesses due to the pandemic. We also managed to pick up these awards.
S.M.E News - Wedding photographers of the year 2020 Northern Ireland
Global Wedding Awards - 2020 Best creative wedding photography specialist Northern Ireland
Prestige Awards - Northern Ireland wedding photographer of the year 2020
ThreeBestRated - Best photographer 2020
At the end of each year we usually share a selection of some of our favourite wedding photographs from the year just gone. This year in particular because of all of the difficulties faced by both ourselves and our couples in still being able to proceed with their wedding plans against all of the odds we feel its more important than ever to showcase the best parts of 2020, so here are some of our favourite wedding photographs from 2020.
We look forward to 2021 with some hope but also a little concern. While the news of the vaccines now being available gives us great hope that a return to normality is not far away, it is likely that due to the nature of the pandemic that weddings will still suffer some sort of restrictions for at least the earlier part of the year. Hopefully those restrictions will be enough to keep people safe whilst still allowing couples to get married and enjoy their wedding day to its fullest.
We have always relied a lot on recommendations from previous clients and from our friends within the wedding industry to help put our name in front of couples looking for a wedding photographer and this year more any other we continue to need that help. We really do appreciate what our previous clients do for us in terms of recommending us to their family and friends. Social media is also a great way of getting our name in front of couples looking for wedding photographers as well. All those likes, shares and tags on Facebook, Instagram etc. really help us too. Thank you!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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