my wedding photographer, videographer, band, and dj

When I originally planned this post, I thought I wanted to go into detail about my venue selection, what tips I learned from Valerie, and how we finalized the guest list... but I decided to dive deeper into my wedding planning and tell you guys how and who we hired as our photographer, videographer, band, and DJ. The very first thing I suggest doing is hiring a wedding planner! They CAN and WILL help you with everything, give advice from 1st hand experience, and set you up on a timeline for success! Sapphire Events was the best decision I made (besides saying yes to marrying G!)

My wedding planner, Valerie, has amazing YouTube videos that go into detail about budget, guest list, and your venue selection.  So, once we made a deposit on our selected venue, we then dove straight into photo, video, and entertainment.

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Drumroll please...

Wedding Day Photographer: Lainey Reed Photography
Rehearsal Dinner Photographer: Rachel Madelyn Photo
iPhone Photographer: Katelyn Ehrhardt
Videographer: Our Story Creative
Band: Nola Dukes Band
DJ: Kurt Valvis

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So I’m sure by now you know that being an influencer/blogger can lead to sponsorships and collaborations. I have been lucky to collaborate with so many great wedding vendors! However, I had my heart set on certain photographers, videographers, bands, and a DJ. I decided that these were the things I wanted to hand select without having to collaborate, because I knew exactly who I wanted. The photographers, videographer, band, and DJ were not things I wanted to skimp on... I knew they would take up a large part of the budget so I planned accordingly. It’s all about balance, right?!

As soon as I picked my band and DJ, I met up with my bridesmaids to pick out songs! I’m not afraid to admit I can be an OCD bride... so we went to a coffee shop and looked through the band’s suggested song list and also put together a playlist for the DJ. I have been to so many weddings with great music that really got people on the dance floor and others where the music was kind of generic, so I made sure we picked a killer playlist! The band was something my mom wanted more than anything else! She wanted a large 10 piece band. (I didn’t even know that was a thing... according to her it is.) Because the band is so large, we actually got to hand select a few of the instruments. That was pretty cool!

For video, I wanted a highlight video a few days after my wedding, so my planners negotiated that into our contract (another great perk of having a planner)! I also wanted my videographers at my rehearsal dinner. In the south, it is very common for guests to give speeches at the rehearsal instead of during the actual wedding (wedding day dinner is usually buffet style) and I wanted to make sure those sweet + special words were documented for us to have forever. And now that we have our photographer, videographer, band, and DJ we can shift gears to focusing on picking out our cakes, invitations, and of course florals! 

Make sure you keep an eye out for more videos that showcase the wedding planning process on my IGTV channel.

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All selections and opinions in this post are my own.