The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Six Dresses, One Bolt of Cloth
Everybody agreed on sage green. It arrived from three websites as three different greens.
Alterations in house
Opinion
The Journal
45
Pieces
85
Departments
The Little Wedding Planner team on venues, flowers, photographers and dresses. What we think is worth your money, what is not, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything.
The latest · Coastal
Nobody Moves a Wedding for Wind
Rain gets a decision and a phone call. Wind just turns up, and everybody smiles through it.
By The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
A wet weather option exists because rain forces somebody to choose something on the morning. Wind never crosses a line, so nobody chooses anything, and on the coast it turns up on the fine days as well. The only defence is a venue that made the choice long before you arrived: a lee, a hedge, a wall that comes down, a room facing the same water.
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Building Has Already Said Yes
A venue will say yes to your ceremony on the phone. Whether the kitchen, the room and the price list were built for it is a different question, and it was answered in writing long before you rang.
All-inclusive
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Bush Runs on a Generator
You choose it for the gum trees. What you are buying is everything a town does quietly, on a property where somebody has to do all of it.
Blank canvas
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Dog Is a Booking
Pet friendly is two words on an amenity list. It does not say who is holding the lead at four o'clock, or who is driving home at eight.
Pet friendly
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Email You Do Not Have to Write
Nobody is going to tell you that you are not welcome. Some say that you are, in writing, before anybody asks.
Full public price ladder
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Mountain Is a Timetable
An elopement on a summit is a walk with a deadline, and the walk is the part you are paying for.
Adventure and landscape
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Tiebreaker Is Not in the Gallery
Timeline help sits on a photographer's inclusion list and reads like packaging. It is not. How early she does it is what separates the last two on your shortlist.
Booking timeline
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Water That Holds Still
A lake at four in the afternoon does the one thing the ocean will not do for you, which is nothing at all.
Bush and wilderness
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
They Have Shot One Before
A shortlist gets built on how the pictures look. This country has one wedding memorised, and if yours runs another way, the harder question is who has already worked a day like it.
Cultural ceremonies
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Your Mother's Dress Is a Fabric Problem
A gown that has sat in a box for forty years is a fabric problem long before it is a sentimental one, and the studios that do this well say so first.
Alterations in house
Back issue
This edition is about the parts of a wedding nobody quotes you for. The alterations that are not in the price of the dress, the album that is not in the price of the photography, the hours the bar runs for that are shorter than the night, and the person taking the flowers down at midnight. Most of it is published. Almost none of it is on the first page you are shown.
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Candid and Natural Are Not Styles
Candid and natural, the commonest ways a photographer sums up her own work, describe what she will not do to you. Ask instead who gets told where to stand, and when.
Analogue film
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Four Hundred Photographs, or However Many There Are
You will ask what he charges and how long he stays. Almost nobody asks how many pictures come back.
Album as heirloom
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
It Costs Thirty Dollars to Try On a Dress
A fee, an hour and a limit on guests. Printed on the booking page, all three are a kindness, and silence is not the same as free.
Appointment fee
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Almost Nobody Prices the Alterations
Almost every wedding gown has to be altered before it can be worn. The price of that work is the hardest number to find before you buy, and you usually meet it standing on a box with the dress already paid for.
Alterations in house
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Somebody Takes the Flowers Down at Midnight
Your quote covers building the wedding. Ask who takes it apart, what time they finish, and whether anyone is paying them.
Hire and styling
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Album Is the Thing You Keep
You compared photographers on the price of a day. The book is priced further down the same page.
Album as heirloom
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Bar Has a Clock on It
The food is priced per head. The drinks are priced per head and by the hour, and the second number is the one nobody reads out.
All-inclusive
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Flower Budget Has a Published Floor
A bouquet price is the only answer small enough to fit in one line, which is why it is the wrong question. What decides the budget is the figure a florist puts under the whole job.
Budget guidance published
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Your Florist Has a Funeral on Friday
A florist's services list tells you what she sells. It does not tell you which week you have booked, and the week is what decides your flowers.
Minimum spend floors
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
A Photographer's Year Runs on Two Clocks
Your date was never the contested part of a photographer's year. The fortnight either side of it is, and most of what lands in that fortnight could not have been booked when you booked.
Booking timeline
Back issue
Our first edition, and most of it comes down to one habit: the wedding trade is very good at telling you what a day will look like and very bad at telling you what it will cost. Where the money actually goes, which rooms are worth it, and the questions we would ask before signing anything.
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Ask What Happens If You Have to Move the Date
Everyone tells you to ask. The businesses that answer in public answer with a ladder of dates, and the ladder is what you are signing.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Ask What Is Not Accessible
Two words on an amenity list are not a plan. A wedding is a car park, a lawn, a chair, a toilet and a dance floor, and the page worth trusting is the one that tells you which part of it a guest cannot reach.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Nobody's Timeline Includes the Months After
Every wedding timeline stops on the wedding day. The thing you are mainly buying turns up months later, and the wait is the one part of the plan nobody makes.
Album as heirloom
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Somebody Has to Decide Who Gets the Rooms
The line about accommodation reads like a facility, filed in with the parking and the dance floor. It is not one. It is a decision about who gets a bed and who drives home, and nobody at the venue can make it for you.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Menu With the Letters On It
It is easy to get a venue to say it caters for every dietary requirement. It is much harder to get it in writing, against a dish.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
You Are Not Choosing a Shop, You Are Choosing a Rack
Most bridal shops sell gowns that other people designed. A few draw and make their own. Walk into one of those and the person who can change a neckline is standing in the room.
Exclusive stockist
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Your Dress Has a Factory Schedule
Every other supplier is asking whether your date is free. The dress is asking whether it can be made in time.
Booking timeline
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Your Wet Weather Plan Is a Second Venue
You are booking a second room. Nobody has shown it to you.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
A Venue Is an Argument About How to Spend a Day
Every floor plan is a theory of what a wedding is for.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Acoustics Over Aesthetics
You spent nine months choosing a room and never once listened to it.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Friday Is on the Wrong Side of the Discount
The midweek discount is real and it is published. It just starts on the Monday, not the Friday.
Budget tiers
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Industrial or Rustic, Ask What Comes With the Room
Two mood boards, and neither of them answers the question that costs money: how much of this room do you have to bring?
Blank canvas
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Nobody Will Tell You What It Costs
A room quoted before anybody knows your date is a number that will be wrong. That is a good reason to publish a range. It has never been a reason to publish nothing.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Move the Month, Not the Day
A winter wedding can cost less, if you ask for the right rate. The hard part is announcing the date at the dinner table.
Booking timeline
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Sustainability Is a Florist's Job, and the Work Is on the Page
The flowers a florist sells are dead in five days, and somebody has to carry the bin out. That is why they are where you can check an environmental claim.
Climate and logistics
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Blank Canvas Is a Trap
The empty warehouse is cheaper than the all-inclusive venue right up until you price the chairs.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Case for the Urban Elopement
Everyone pictures a cliff. The best small wedding in Australia is on a Tuesday in a city you already live in.
Elopement and micro weddings
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Destination Disconnect
Asking eighty people to buy a flight is a decision you make on their behalf and they pay for.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The Guest List Is the Budget
Cut the flowers, argue about the bar, hunt a cheaper photographer. None of it moves the number the way twenty names do.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
The $2,000 Photographer Does Not Exist
A starting price is usually the shortest thing a photographer sells, not the price of a wedding day. Work out how many hours your day needs, and the figures on your shortlist finally describe the same thing.
Album as heirloom
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Somebody Pays for the Drive
In a few wedding regions no florist lives close enough to walk in. The flowers get driven in, the drive is real work, and somebody pays for it.
Climate and logistics
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Twenty Guests Is a Hard Wedding to Buy
Twenty guests is easy to host. It is hard to buy, because most of the rooms you will look at were built and priced for a crowd.
Access friction
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
You Cannot Try On the Size They Stock
A bridal shop has two size numbers. Only the smaller one decides your afternoon in the cubicle.
Budget tiers
The Little Wedding Planner Editors ·
Your Peonies Got on a Plane
A peony grown here has a few weeks in spring. The rest of the year it has been on a plane, and the freight is in your quote whether or not anybody writes it down.
Budget guidance published
Topics
Everything standing between a couple and a quote: fees, minimums, appointments and deposits.
The venue puts a per-head number on its own website before you make contact.
You get the entire place for the day, and nobody else is on site.
How far ahead each category needs you to commit, and what it costs to be late.
Every rung of the package ladder is priced in public, not just the bottom one.
Whether a vendor puts any number at all on its own website, across all four categories.
Getting there is a journey every guest has to plan, book and pay for.
What the entry, the middle and the top of each market actually cost.
The store publishes what its gowns cost.
There is a named indoor answer to rain, published before you have to ask for it.
Everybody sells a small wedding now, and some of them have thought about it properly.
The deliverable is a printed object, not a download link that expires.
One number that already contains the food, the drink, the chairs, the linen and the coordinator.
A raw space that supplies walls and a roof and leaves everything else to you and your budget.
Australian heat is a design constraint, and they treat it as one out loud.
The gown is made after you order it, to your numbers.
There is a published floor, and below it they will not quote a wedding at all.
More than one place on the property where you can actually get married.
No figure anywhere; the price arrives only after you hand over your date and your email.
A purpose-built function room that does this every weekend and knows exactly how.
The seamstress works in the building, and the fittings happen where you bought the dress.
The kitchen is the reason the venue exists; the room is where the food is eaten.
The flowers came out of Australian ground, and they can tell you whose.
Ceiling clouds and three-metre arches, with the rigging and the ladder to match.
Four hundred people fit, and the room was built for that number.
A wedding for a dozen people, sold as its own product rather than as a discount on a big one.
The date is the cheapest lever a couple has, and almost nobody pulls it.
A weekday date is cheaper and the discount is published rather than negotiated.
The same room costs less on a Wednesday, or in June, and the venue says so in public.
They build the timeline with you months before the day, because the timeline is their problem too.
Real dollar figures sit on the website before anyone has to enquire.
No number is published, and the price becomes a conversation you have to start.
No price anywhere; you find out standing in the fitting room in a gown you already love.
The store is not in a capital city, which changes what it can stock and who it serves.
The cheapest published number buys two hours, which is an elopement rate and not a wedding rate.
Concrete, brick and a postcode your guests can walk to.
The paddock is a paddock on the Monday, not a backdrop hired for the Saturday.
It costs money to try on a dress here, before anyone has sold you anything.
They tell you what couples actually spend before you have to guess.
The setting is native bush, and the drive in is part of the day.
Travel is something a photographer sells, with a price on it, not an inconvenience.
The garden is the architecture, and someone is paid year-round to keep it that way.
The building predates the wedding industry, and the wedding has to fit the building.
They also own the vases, the arbour, the plinths and the candelabra.
They shoot a radius, not a country.
They print the number of weeks it takes, so a bride with a date can work backwards.
Banksia and waratah rather than imported peonies.
Colour, separates, a suit, a jumpsuit, a short dress - a wedding outfit that is not the costume.
The gown has been worn before, on purpose, and costs a fraction of new.
They publish what is actually in season, month by month, where anyone can read it.
The ceremony arch becomes the bridal table, deliberately and on a schedule.
No cap on how many images come back.
A business that makes wine and hosts weddings, in that order.
They will sell you buckets and teach you to do it yourself.
A guest who uses a wheelchair can reach the ceremony, the table and the toilet.
The location is the hard part, and they own the boots for it.
Actual film goes through an actual camera and to an actual lab.
They take a deliberately small number of weddings a year, and they say the number.
Salt water is in the frame and in the weather forecast.
They have already shot the ceremony your family expects.
The venue can actually run a wedding that is not Anglo-Australian.
Above a size 18 is stock in the room, not a special order and an apology.
Bridesmaids, mothers and flower girls under the same roof and the same appointment.
They will move you, light you and tell you where to put your hands.
Dried, preserved or pressed, so it outlives the day it was made for.
The only place in the state that carries the label, which is also why it can hold the price.
They say it out loud instead of leaving a couple to guess from the gallery.
The whole pitch is aimed at people who hate being photographed.
Your mother's dress, redesigned into yours.
The water is a river, a lake or a dam, which behaves nothing like the ocean.
She photographs your wedding, and next month somebody's newborn.
They will make the bouquet alone, and they say so on purpose.
The whole boutique is yours for the hour, and nobody else is trying on beside you.
The dog is allowed at the ceremony, in writing, before you ask.
One booking covers both cameras, and the two operators have worked together before.
A wearable wedding dress, not a veil, under fifteen hundred dollars.
A gown you can carry out today, or wear inside three months.
The stock on the shop floor is for sale, discounted, in the size it happens to be.
They publish the sizes actually hanging on the rack, not the sizes the label can order.
A florist with a door, a fridge and a Tuesday.
Nothing is arranged. The day happens and the camera watches it happen.
Foam-free, composted, and specific enough to be checked.
Five figures is a normal answer in this room.
No shopfront, no Mother's Day rush; weddings and events only.
They shoot weddings and nothing else, all year.