Our First Wedding Show

Our first wedding show had us standing on ice. Literally. 

our booth space with our neighbours and all of our gear piled on our table

starts off pretty bare!

OUR BOOTH! tada! A little DIY magic and a blanketponcho to keep me warm.

Our winter boots look authentic next to the winter birch bark trees in our background, non? 

Our entire booth was handmade or repurposed objects straight from our home. We spent hours putting together our business cards which literally tied a knot, painting those birch trees and scrubbing our kitchen table of the baby food remnants. The bunting flags hang in our home now and the picture frames were ripped off the walls and repurposed for the show. We contemplated bringing our desktop mac like other vendors had, but were content for our first show with our trusty 7 year old mac book that I'm writing this post on now. Good old lappy! 

We set-up camp in a hockey arena. Yep! That's how we do in Ontario. We felt like we were literally standing on the ice. We were fucking freezing for hours, I'm not gonna lie. It was pretty bad. Especially at 6.5 months with hours of standing. That's ok though! Once the doors opened, we were happy campers. No complaints from us! It was amazing to chat with brides, grooms and their families about what we love to do.

We made a very conscious effort not to be all up in your face, soliciting and pushing pamphlets. Instead, we politely said hi to those who looked interested and started chatting if the moment was right. I think that approach suits us, although maybe it's not forward enough. We're still working on selling ourselves. I guess you have to do that if you own your own company, eh? 

We received many compliments on our tie-the-knot business cards and received some great feedback on our brand which is equally as important to us as booking. It's very validating to know we're on to something here and the fact that we put so much of ourselves into our work and into our booth, feels good when others get it. 

Now that we've got a show under our belt, I think there's a lot we would do differently and a lot we would do exactly the same. We're already thinking of other shows in our radius we could hit up that would have larger number of attendees (this show had less than 1000 for sure, which was hard for us as a small business owner who rented the booth space expecting more). 

Overall, we were just happy to be there and showcase our work. We put a lot into our handmade booth and even though it didn't quite fit in the booth space, and it was very DIY, and although no one took us up on our show special of booking that day and receiving $500 off, a lot of people entered our contest and a lot of people started to think about wedding video. We're new in town and although we're ready for the business and we'd love to go after it fast and hard, we know that sometimes these things take time. 

We will draw the winner on Sunday. I'm very excited for the future. We made some great connections with local photographers and others in the industry and we can't wait to see how the rest of the year pans out.

Celebrating 10 years: Local Film Festival Trailer

Here's another project we've been working on, this one for the ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival here in our new/old home, Peterborough, ON! ReFrame happens every January, during the coldest weekend of the year, and it was our pleasure to create a video for them for their 10th anniversary next weekend January 24th-January 26th, 2014. Very cool stuff. We interviewed a number of people who have been with the festival since the start, and some who have only recently become involved, but all of whom love the festival and have had great experiences attending it. The video itself will be premiered at their opening gala, so here's the trailer for now. We'll release the full video online once the festival's over, so look out for it!

Jordan and Becky ||| New Years Eve Wedding

Happy New Year! With the crazy icestorm that hit Ontario a few week ago, our holidays were a bit play it by ear, so Matt and I had no idea if we would be able to shoot my cousin's wedding on New Years Eve. The days passed and eventually power was restored to the good, bad, beautiful and sketchy people of Ontario.  The streets were mostly clear that day and we made it safely into Oshawa for the evening nuptials. Neither of us had ever been to a wedding that took place entirely after 7pm. We love shooting weddings that are different than the traditional fan fare. It gives us room to be creative and we find it really reflects the personality of each couple and how they'll move forward in their lives together. Jordan and Becky were no exception. They had personalized vows for a short and sweet ceremony and then it was party time! My family busted many crazy moves on the dance floor which was a surprise to all. I have to give Matt credit for this video. Being almost 6 months pregnant, and since it was my family's first wedding, I thought I'd like to take it easy and direct from my comfy chair and pile of delicious sweets. Matt did all the filming and editing and I stepped in afterwards with the colour grading and a bit of supervisory editing. All in all, although we flew by the seat of our pants for this one, we think it turned out great! It feels so good to be back at work after many ups and downs these past few months. 2014 looks promising for Love and Anchor Cinematography. 

Baby Bump Shoot in Oshawa, ON

While we were visiting family in Ontario a few weeks ago, Sarah and Tyler mentioned they had no photos of Sarah's gorgeous baby bump. Matt and I jumped at the chance to photograph and offered our services without even thinking twice. We are always excited to work, but we were really thrilled to produce a few photos of this amazing time in their lives, especially for family. That's our soon to be niece or nephew in there! Even though we were only supposed to be visiting so they could meet their nephew, Mr. Rowan, we turned it into an impromptu photoshoot. Rowan was sent home for a nap with his Grandparents and Matt and I hopped in Sarah and Tyler's car to find a location. Our original idea, Camp Samac, was closed. Boo! That's ok. We're resourceful people. With the car low on gas, we pulled in to the closest park. You'd never know that behind us was a busy street, a city dump, and a baseball and soccer field. 

For us, not being prepared wasn't really an issue. Tyler and Sarah were so excited that that is all we really needed. Now we have a few more photos under our belt and they have those belly photos they were after.