Let me digress for a moment. While you might like to think your wedding is the event of the year, in reality, not all weddings are created equal. Not all clients will provide the same profit potential for all of the vendors. True a band will get the same fees regardless of the size of the wedding. Even then, some wedding will book the band for 4 hours and others for 6.

It is important to remember the contract you sign with your vendors is a two way street. In return for giving the vendor money today, your vendor is promising to show up at your wedding to provide the services you requested. Now it does not matter if the vendor is a one person operation or a large corporation. All vendors have a capacity limit. It could be one event a weekend or a hundred, it really doesn’t matter. What does matter that at some point, your vendor will reach capacity and have to turn potential customers away.

In some respects weddings are very much like airplanes. Each plane has a set number of seats and you can’t put extra people on the plane. On the other hand, when the plane leaves the gate with an empty seat, there is no way to ever fill that seat. The revenue potential from the empty seat is gone forever. When a wedding vendor has an open day, they’ve lost the chance to earn income on that day.

Finally, putting this all together. When you book a vendor, they are promising to be at your wedding and turn away other potential business for the same date. Should you change your mind the vendor may have lost the opportunity to earn a living on that particular day. In addition, most vendors cannot afford to have clients cancel for no reason. If this were to happen, clients would book a vendor and then shop for a better deal.

In the end, all vendors have differing policies for canceling a contract. Some are outright forfeiture and others will provide a refund should they rebook the date. Some will even give a refund for extenuating circumstances (ie. military deployment, family illness). Should you need, wish or desire to cancel your contract with your wedding vendor, you should carefully read your contract to determine the official policy. It never hurts to asks for a refund, but don’t be surprised if the vendor says “No.”

I pressed the power on button. NOTHING! I tried again. Still nothing. I was a bit worried and knew it was one of two things. It was either the power supply which I had replaced about a year before or the motherboard. I took the computer to Tiger and they told me it was the motherboard and I needed a new computer. Just to make sure, I took it to Best Buy and they confirmed the bad news.

I was not in the least bit worried about any of the data files. I knew I had them installed on a hard drive I could remove and if that didn’t work, I had all my files backed up on an external drive. I was just more upset at having to unexpectedly needing to buy a new computer. So after looking at a new computer, I bought a Gateway computer. It does run much faster than my old computer. My only complaint is that Gateway does not make it easy to install additional hardware. I called customer service, they told me “We don’t recommend that BUT you can call our pay per call number and we’ll tell you.” Sorry what I heard is “We want you to pay us for that information”

After several tries, I gave up on moving the old hard drive into the computer and restored all the files from my backup drives. I also had to reinstall all of the software I use. All of this had to be done during my busiest weekend of the year. It has taken me about a week to get things back to the point where I can get some work done. Furthermore, I have to get used to Windows 7 as I used to use XP.

If you can look past our lovely bride, Milena, you can see the spacious well kept grounds.

Here’s the Rabbi filling out the Ketuba, a Jewish wedding contract.

A close up of the document. I’m glad the groom reads Hebrew and knows what he’s signing!

I really liked this floral arrangement.

The chuppa, Jewish Wedding Canopy, was all decked out with white roses.

Here are some from the wedding ceremony:



This is one of my favorite photos from this wedding!

The rest of these photos are from the reception. The Rockleigh has installed an LED uplighting system which can display any color lights. They really add to the elegance of the event. As a photographer I like them because they provide an interesting background to the photos.

In these next two photos, you can see how the lighting has changed to provide a different look to the room.

When it was time to cut the cake, the lights were turned back to purple.

Let’s start with your camera. It should allow you to control the exposure settings. That is you’ll need to be able to have a long exposure and an average aperture setting. Next you’ll need a cable release and a tripod to keep your camera steady during the long exposure. I usually set my camera to ISO200, f5.6 or f8.0. Before the fireworks show starts, I look for an area where I can see the show and yet is away from any light pollution. I set everything up and wait for the show. When the show starts, I take a couple of shots of the first few bursts. I’ll look at the images to see if I need to make any adjustments and then photographer the rest of the show. I’ll try to get several bursts on one image to create a dramatic effect. If you’re lucky you can follow a rocket into the air and then get it exploding for a wonderful shot. Have a great 4th of July.