Time for some inspiration from SBB’s photographer friends! I have to admit, I am a huge sucker for the subject of this month’s pics: bouquets. I know not everyone loves flowers as much as I do, but for me (having been a bridesmaid three times now), the moment the bouquets are delivered is one of the most exciting of the day. I absolutely LOVE how not only has floristry really become such an art but how for wedding photographers they’re no longer just a thing the bride holds, but the opportunity for both breathtaking still lifes, and a way of showing the personality of the bride or wedding. So when I sent out the call for this month’s showcase, I asked SBB’s wonderful photographers not to necessarily choose the most stunning bouquet, but the pic that best represented their style. And wow. Every single one of these images (which actually do show beautiful flowers, by the by) had me floored. So have a look through and be inspired in more ways than one – and remember to show our sponsors some love by heading over from their links to check out more of their lovely work!
Category: Suppliers
Winter Gold {Plus DIY details + special offer}
You guys, I am doing such a happy dance as I post this feature today! It has been a long while coming, and I am thrilled to finally be able to share it with you. See, this isn’t just a beautiful shoot that someone sent me, I was actually there for this one. I saw it put together from scratch. I even helped make it happen a little. Not that it’s my shoot – ‘assisted’ is the key term here. All of this shimmery, wintery loveliness comes straight from the imagination of styling queen Louise Beukes of b.loved (how pretty must it be inside her mind?) as well as the lens of Liesl Cheney. It’s all about making your guests feel cozy while at the same time sweeping them up Narnia-style into a world of snowflakes and pinecones and sophisticated elegance. And now’s a good time for me to say how proud I am of everything Louise has achieved. A couple of years ago, she approached me as a SouthBound Bride herself, and told me she wanted to start a blog. I thought it was a great idea. Then she told me she wanted to be a stylist, and I thought that was an even better one. The result is not only daily eye candy on her fabulous blog, but a portfolio that is just busting at the seams with loveliness. This was one of her first shoots, so you can see she hit the ground running. Oh, and the reason we didn’t show it to you earlier? Only because it was too busy being featured in UK magazine You & Your Wedding.Read More
Sareh Nouri Spring 2013 Collection
Time for some more dress dreaminess (yes, I know, we have been a lot about the dresses recently, but I know that it’s the first thing most brides start dreaming about!). A few years back, if you’d asked me what I thought an ideal wedding dress should look like, I would have told you as plain and simple and flattering as possible, but I think I may have caught some kind of fashion bug. Now I am all, the frothier and more romantic, the more I love it. (Lucky I have no plans to marry, or some poor man would be forking out for a Vera Wang.) So you’ll forgive me for going just a little bit melty when Sareh Nouri, a New York-based designer, sent over her Spring 2013 collection. It is GORGEOUS. I’m especially in love with the peachy blush Sophie, which might be my new favourite coloured dress. Or the sparkle-tastic Ressan. Or elegant Audrey. Heck, I love ’em all, especially when the Sareh Nouri team took them out into the countryside with an incredible, ethereal photoshoot with Emme Wynn (who might also be my newest photography crush). The perfect amount of loveliness to light up your Tuesday afternoon!Read More
Q&A with Lizanne Higgs Photography
Hello friends! Just before our Friday comes to a close, I have someone lovely to introduce you to. I met photographer Lizanne Higgs towards the end of last year – she had been living in London for a while, but has now made the move back to SA with her husband – congrats, Lizanne! Before she did, I was able to get to know her a bit, and she answered a few questions for me over a glass of wine. I’m sharing what she had to say together with some of the pics from her first Cape wedding – both were teachers, so there was a bit of a school decor theme going on, how cute is that?
Hi Lizanne – thanks so much for chatting to us today! How did you get started as a photographer?
Hi Gaby, this is so exciting being interviewed for your amazing blog, SouthBound Bride. Thank you!
I have had a desire in my heart to do photography since my high school days and now I am finally living the dream. Unfortunately I could not afford to buy a digital camera back in those days and so I set that dream aside and slightly forgot about it… until a few years later when I read the book by Joyce Meyers, I Dare You: Embrace Life with Passion. The book inspired me and I remembered what I wanted to do with my life as a profession, I wanted to be a photographer and within a month after reading the book I bought my first camera in the UK (on my credit card!). I starting taking photos of scenery and eventually a few friends asked me to photograph their weddings and newborn babies and from there on I could not stop. Every photo shoot was more exciting than the last and the adrenalin rush I got on some of the photo shoots was mind-blowing! I LOVE photography. I had some awesome opportunities in second shooting weddings in the UK and from there on shot my first solo wedding in London.Read More
Cymbeline Paris 2013 La Parisienne Collection
Audrey Hepburn said it: Paris is always a good idea. And it’s not just the city in general that I have a total crush on, it’s the people. Parisian women (oh heck, all French women) are so impossibly chic, they frighten me a little. I look at the Facebook albums of French friends and wonder how not only do they always look perfectly put together, but so do their mothers, their grandmothers, their friends. I mean, we Italians have bella figura, but the French… well, they’re something else entirely. I’m not sure it’s something you can learn or buy or replicate – I have a feeling it’s part of the DNA. But what you can do, if you want to have that je ne sais quoi on your wedding day, is to invest in a dress by Cymbeline Paris. If there’s one label that embodies that French knack for combining vintage and modern, timeless and fashionable, formal and avant garde, then this is it. There’s even a bridal trench coat, fergoodnesssakes. Here’s what they had to say about it themselves: The Parisian lady is known worldwide for her “unconventional chic”. She highlights the basics and makes her daring a major asset. Everything is about attitude, being in tune with oneself and combining this with a little bit of irreverence.
I love every piece in this collection – appropriately named Le Parisienne – and even better, it’s photographed around the beautiful city, so we can do some Paris travel dreaming at the same time. Sigh. Oh, and the male model in this shoot aint too hard on the eyes neither. Oui to all of it! Enjoy.Read More
Weddings by Nicola and Glen
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – South Africans are quietly taking over the world. Not least the wedding world either (*cough cough Colin Cowie*). And I often meet amazing service providers here in the UK who are making a big name for themselves. I love this – not just because I’m proudly Saffa, but because all of that talent is often available to brides and grooms in SA as well as abroad. I mean, we all love to go home, right? And with the summer season in the UK being different, you can often get an amazing international (homegrown) talent on their holidays (just like our amazing local photographers often travel during the SA winter) – many of them even have a South African side to their businesses. How cool is that? This is the case with today’s featured photographers, who have been longtime Twitter pals and supporters of SBB, and whom I am delighted to introduce to you properly today. SO… meet Weddings by Nicola and Glen! Nicola (from SA) and Glen already have a thriving business based in the Cotswolds (but shooting all over the UK) – just take a look at their site to see the dreamy country celebrations they have shot, in a style that’s a lovely combination of intimacy and grandeur. I can just imagine the shots they would take amid the Cape scenery…Read More
The Question: Favourite Festive Traditions
First of all, a huge HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all my SouthBound Brides! Hope you had a lovely day, and an especial shoutout to those of you who got engaged under the mistletoe! I’ve had a very chilled day (and I do mean chilled – rain galore in London) and full to the gills with delicious food (homemade chocolate fondant, nailed it!) I have just settled down to watch the Downton Abbey Christmas special and to share a tiny bit of inspiration from our fabulous sponsors, who I have asked: What’s your favourite festive tradition? I love hearing about their Christmas traditions, and have even included one of my own! Here’s hoping that whatever traditions you incorporated this year, you had a wonderful time, and here’s to good things in 2013. (PS Just to up the pretty stakes, I have included some of my absolute favourite Christmas tables from around the blogs this year, yay!)
Favourite Photos of 2012 {Sponsor Showcase}
Hello friends! As I mentioned in my post earlier, from now until the new year we’re going to be focusing on the best of 2012, so to kick things off, I asked my lovely photographer sponsors to share their favourite picture from 2012. Not an easy thing to pick, I imagine, since they have all shot so many lovely images. But it’s great to see a variety of special moments, beautiful light, interesting angles and colours. Which is your favourite?
Q&A with Christine W Photography
Hello friends! Time for some more awesome supplier inspiration – today we’re meeting the fantastic Christine Watters of Christine W. Photography in Cape Town and hearing a bit more about what inspires her, and her thoughts on SA weddings. For those of you who still want some lovely inspiration next week, SBB will be right here with the very best of 2012 ahead of the new year, including style guides to our favourite weddings that I know you’ll love. This weekend is all about inspiration boards, so be sure to pop in for those as well. But for those of you going off the grid from today, here’s wishing you an amazing Christmas (or whatever you’ll be celebrating) and I look forward to catching you right back here next year. ANYWAY, back to the lovely Christine. ;)
Hello Christine! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat to us today. How did you get started as a photographer?
It all started in a sort of, “I have to do it,” moment. I had studied media and communications, with a specific focus on feature writing and then photojournalism. While working in a photography studio for a while, I spent every free moment scouring the web, always ending up on the latest wedding blog or pouring over images on wedding photographers sites. I then reached a “now or never” point at the beginning of 2011, took the leap and started my business.
How would you define your style?
I like to describe my style as a mixture of feeling and knowledge. I love it when I feel like I can almost breathe in the feeling of an image. Soft, light images, that take a small moment of emotion and pause it… forever. I’m always trying to tell a story of events, while focusing on the finer details of love, laughter and everything in between. I love creating romantic and unique photographs that reflect a couple’s individual style but that also make my stomach flip with excitement.Read More
Meet Claire Morgan Photography
When one of my friends gets engaged, I always advise them to sit down with their groom and pick three things that mean the most to them – three things that they will spend money on, that they won’t compromise on. And then, to some degree, to let the other things go. Every couple chooses different things, but if it was me, I know the first thing I would be prioritising: photography. It’s no secret that I’m in LOVE with wedding photography, of course – I couldn’t do what I do if I wasn’t. (And lucky for me that I can be a blogger, because I sure as hell couldn’t have been a photographer!) I love the way a photographer can capture those moments that you might miss (after all, a bride can’t be everywhere) as well as the ones you will never forget. I love how good they can make you look (anyone who says differently is lying), and I love the way that a great photographer has a sense of narrative, so that the pictures tell a story all on their own. Having spent so much time chatting to photographers, I also know how much hard work, knowledge and passion goes into their work – it really is worth every penny. At the end of the day, your pictures are the one physical thing you really can carry with you from your big day – nothing else really compares. So photography would be at the top of my list.
If you agree, then there’s one homegrown talent that you really have to meet. Claire Morgan is a photographer whose work I have admired since I got started in this industry – every time one of her weddings pops up in my Reader I stop whatever I’m doing and take a peek. Originally from South Africa, she’s based in Austria for much of the year, where she shoots the most beautiful, luxurious European weddings in incredible locations, and gives to each of them a sense both of drama and intimacy. And Claire hasn’t just shot in Vienna – she’s worked in the Seychelles, Armenia, New York, Italy, Greece, Mallorca and Chile, among others. Her work is regularly featured in top magazines and blogs – Grace Ormonde Style, Wedding Magazine, Style Me Pretty. I’ve even been lucky enough to feature some of it here. She has a slew of awards and honourable mentions, but she’s still incredibly lovely and down-to-earth. In short, she’s just the kind of photographer you want at the top of your list. And even better, she is available to shoot in South Africa during summer months – contact Claire for more info.
But enough telling you how awesome Claire is. Time for you to see for yourself… after all, as I said before, the pictures tell a story all on their own…Read More