Picture perfect

By mid December we had the two most important decisions regarding the wedding answered: where and when? Then it was time to start officially recruiting members of "Team Lisa & John" as we began the search for the perfect wedding vendors.

When I returned to the US after grad school, my first job was as a retoucher and production assistant for a high-volume wedding photography studio in Wall, NJ. However, working for the photographer made me more aware of what I hated about wedding photos, instead of what I liked about them. I hated cheesy, posed portraits and I despised that cliche shot of the bridesmaids' bouquets laid around the bride's train. In general I found myself more drawn to a documentary style, and I appreciated shots that were a bit outside the box. I was determined to find someone who was less of a "wedding photographer" and more of an "artist."

I turned, once again, to the pages of NJ Bride magazine and searched for local vendors on theknot.com, but didn't really find anything that struck my fancy right away.

At the time, I was working in the corporate office of a chain of gifts and occasions stores, and around the holidays the corporate employees always lent a hand in the field by actually working in the stores during those high-traffic and high-stress times. When I showed the girls in the Middletown store my ring and told them about our wedding plans, one of the girls, Kate, told me "You HAVE to look at my wedding photographer's website, he was amazing!" She directed me to www.jefftismanphotography.com.

I was pretty much blown away by his online portfolio and accompanying blog. Jeff had a really unique style and reading his online bio helped me understand how his style came to be: he came from a background in rock 'n' roll photography. Now this was an exciting prospect! I was pretty certain Jeff wouldn't be subjecting me to any cheesy bouquet shots!

When I went home that night I excitedly showed John the website, and he agreed that the pictures were awesome. So, the next day I emailed Jeff and requested a meeting, mentioning that my co-worker Kate had recommended him to me. Jeff responded within only a few hours and we set up an appointment for the following weekend.

Within a few minutes of sitting down with Jeff in his studio, I knew we were going to be hiring him for the wedding. He was very chill and laid back, and the samples of not only wedding photos, but also dog photos and baby photos, in his studio were beautiful. In fact, we liked him so much that we may very well have switched our wedding date if he ended up being unavailable on 5-9-09, ha ha! But luckily we were still a year and a half away from the day, and although Jeff did already have many 2009 dates booked at that point, ours wasn't one of them. (Yet!)

What I found amusing, though, was just how much my mind had been warped by working for a cheesy wedding photographer for so long. I retouched over 400 photos of brides a day for almost a year, with nearly all of them posing in front of trees and flowering bushes or other "wedding-appropriate" backgrounds (the beach, sunsets, a lake, you name it). So when I mentioned to Jeff that the ceremony would be up at Rutgers University and that they supposedly had a beautiful botanical garden with flowering dogwood trees, he winced. He said to me "The thing is, when you stand in front of a tree or some flowers, those trees and flowers could be anywhere. Rutgers has so many cool backgrounds, everything from great stone walls to old iron gates, that would be more unique and make a more interesting shot." And it was like, I finally saw the light!

John and I took a copy of Jeff's contract with us when we went home, and I probably said something about "having to think about it" or perhaps "we have other photographers to interview" or whatever, but they would have been lies. We were so excited on the ride home, I immediately got on the phone and told my dad "We found our wedding photographer!" The contract and deposit were in the mail within days.

Now, perhaps you are thinking to yourself while reading this blog, "Gee, Lisa, what gives? You only look at one church and then book it. You only look at three reception halls and then book one. You only interview one photographer and then book him. What's the rush?" The thing is, sometimes you just KNOW when something is right. I used that same instinct for every single vendor we hired, and we ended up with as close to a "perfect" wedding as we possibly could have hoped for. We also used our most trusted vendors' recommendations for other vendors, which proved to be invaluable as well. Through Jeff, we found our florist and videographer. Through the Grand Marquis, we found our DJ. But those are stories for another time!