I always believed that one the best economic indicators for the U.S. economy, was the wedding industry. When the economy was great, brides spent a pretty penny on their wedding. When the economy slowed down, brides still spent a pretty penny on their wedding. But starting one year before the recession hit, brides suddenly just didn't spend less, they dissapeared. When business got slow for me, I knew something was really wrong, the economy was sick. Afterall, if a bride cuts back on her wedding, that means they are cutting back on everything.

And when I mean everything, that also means their man's pocket book as well. As any man knows, we don't control our own money, our women do! This is the reason why I think women control the economy.

So what does the wedding economic indicator tell me? It screams that this recession is far from over. Bookings for me are still down, brides are still not spending as much, and honeymoons are still on a tight budget. And for good reason.

I DON'T BELIEVE THE RECENT ECONOMIC REPORTS RELEASED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

According to Washington, the economy grew at 3.5% in the 3rd quarter, which was fueled by government programs such as "cash for clunkers" and "Home credit" programs, therefore they concluded that the end of the recession is in sight. This doesn't mean ANYTHING. I repeat... This bump, is merely a bump, created by government programs. Cash for clunkers and the home credit programs did nothing other than to motivate future buyers, which would have bought homes and cars anyway, into purchasing their cars and homes in the 3rd quarter. That's all. The demand was not brought upon naturally through market conditions, but through steroid injections which do nothing but offer short term results. Out economy, like steroid users, once off the juice, will go back to normal. And normal for us right now is the following: People are still losing jobs and their homes, the dollar is getting weaker by the minute, and our government is planning to tax the job creators (the wealthy) to fund government programs. Businesses are still going under, commercial foreclosures are at an all time high, and industry after industry is looking for a bailout WITH OUT TAX PAYER MONEY. That is the norm for us right now. That is not a sign of an economy coming out of a recession.

Obama and Bush, and many of their economic advisers have also said that in order for America's economy to flourish once again, Americans have to start borrowing again. In fact, it's not just the White house who said this, congress said it, Trump said it, and many other economists as well. I just happen to disagree with ALL OF THEM.

The Internet bubble crashed because investors placed margin calls on all their positions. The housing market crashed because investors and home owners made bad loans, and/or took out equity loans. Developers over-borrowed as well. In other words, Americans got themselves into this mess because they borrowed too much, and saved too little. And this poverty, trickled up and out to everyone.

The solution to this economic mess could have been as simple as letting those who made the mistakes suffer. After all, that's how we learn isn't it? It's called the school of hard-knocks! Houses would be foreclosed on, but filled with buyers who could afford them. Companies would close, but new ones would soon pop up to fill their shoes. And while many American's would have bad credit, they would probably start saving and building up real wealth WITH CASH, and eventually restore their credit to normal. But that isn't what's happening.

The government is keeping those who can't afford their homes, in their homes, consequently ruining the real estate and rental market. Companies are getting bailed out, or taken over by the government. Americans are being told, they should borrow and not save.

So in conclusion I really don't what to say other than to not buy into all the hype that this recession is on it's way out. My brides, future and present...you need to still pull on those reigns when planning your wedding. Be tight, be frugal, save when you can. A romantic wedding has nothing to do with the amount of money you spend. I know it sounds funny from a businessman who is literally saying, "Hey there, spend less with me if you can..." But hey, I'm an honest guy. I shoot from the hip, and I'm on your side.

Till next time.

Steve Young
The Wedding Guy

Hey there. Sorry I haven't been blogging as often as I should for the past month. It's been an extremely busy month of weddings. I'm thinking here, that I want to take my blog in another direction as well. I realize many of you want to hear about my most recent weddings, but I think I would also like to blog about what's been going on in my everyday life as well. Honestly, it's hard to keep writing about weddings, and to keep things fresh from time to time. So, what I'm going try to do is to blog everyday. It may not be about weddings...just things that are on my mind, or what I've been up too. But don't worry, I'll still blog about my past weddings... that is a must.

So let me talk about my October. I had over 20 weddings this month! Yes, the big two-zero! That is extremely busy for an October. Usually, I have maybe 10 weddings a month in October. But noo...for some reason, this month was hella busy!

On the 23rd, I actually had three weddings. The last wedding ended at 9pm, but work for me didn't. That same night, I had to finish up designing a few business cards, and had to drop off photos to a couple in Waikiki by 4am. So all-in-all, on the 23rd, my workday didn't end till 4am the next morning! Arrghh....Luckily, my next wedding is on the 30th of October, so I still have some time to recover from that long day! Trust me, I'm still recovering!

Well, time for me to hit the hay! Talk to you all tomorrow!

Steve Young
The Hawaii Wedding Reporter
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com

I remember when Robin and Jill's had inquired about my services as it was rather unique. For some reason, we had a whirlwind of strong gust that blew through my neighborhood, blowing roofs off houses and toppling gigantic decade old trees. I took a picture next to one of these trees and posted that picture on my blog. A few hours later, Jill called me. She had seen my picture next to the tree, and realized that it was taken in the same neighborhood at a house that she and Robin were staying at. In fact, after a few minutes of talking on the phone, we both realized that she was staying at a house that was literally a few minutes walk away from me! So I told her that I could meet here in a few minutes, and in literally "in a few minutes" I was in her living room with Robin, answering their wedding inquiry. Now that's a first!

Robin and Jill are my ideal wedding couple. They are laid back like myself, fun to talk to about anything, and as for their wedding plans, they just wanted things nice, romantic, but more importantly, simple. After meeting them for the first time to talk about their wedding plans, I knew that not only that I had booked their services, but I had also made new friends.

So just how did these two meet? How was their first date? And how did Robin propose to Jill? I'd love to tell you, but I think it's better if they told you themselves. Here is their love story, in their own words.

First off, let me get this off my chest. What the hell happened to my Eagles this weekend? I just finished watching the game, ON MY DAY OFF OF ALL DAYS, and they didn't show up to play ONE quarter of good football. The Eagles, my obsession, did not score one touchdown against the measly Raiders. THE RAIDERS! The Raiders did play some great football though. They pressured McNabb, out-powered our line, and their tight-end exploited our young linebacker crew.

Gareth Bowers, a young photographer located in the UK, was sued by a wedding couple, Marc and Sylvia Day for 1450 pounds. According to Mrs. Day:

He (the photographer) seemed very reasonable, very polite and professional. He even showed us albums of his previous work, which we really doubt could have been his. The standard of photographs from our wedding were not to the level of samples he showed us.

From my research, the couple had interviewed more than 10 wedding photographers before finally settling on Mr. Bowers. The photographer, 23 years young, who operated under the name, Fresh Images, said that he had shot 20 weddings and had been in business for four years. That would make him 19 when he opened his business....

Judge Nightingale ruled, "It is not just the quality of the photographs, but the subject of the photos is unworthy of wedding photographs. "

Out of the 400 digital pictures that were taken, the bride thought 22 of them, 5% were acceptable. My comments on the photos, well, they are definitely not the best wedding photos. But's it's really hard for me to say if there were only 22 that were good out of the 400, without see all 400 photos. Digital photographers do shoot a lot of photos, and on average, only 5 to 10% of the come out great. That's why they shoot thousands of pictures at a wedding. I feel as though the media may be cherry picking the bad photos out of the 400 taken. But that's just me guessing.

Now there are two big questions here that should be addressed:

1. Should the photographer, have been sued?

2. Were their warning signs that the Bowers could have recognized to avoid this fiasco?

The answer to both questions is a big "YES!"

Aside from the fact that only 5% of photographers pictures were usable, a lawsuit was just cause because he did not deliver everything that was promised in his invoice. It's important to note that his this photographer probably did have a signed contract with the couple. But it was not the contract which justified the ruling in the case, it was the invoice. Remember, the invoice is more important than the contract 99% of the time. Contracts are used primarily to defend the vendor from lawsuits, never the consumer. Your strongest piece of evidence in any wrongful business suit is your invoice or receipt.

Now there were warning signs that the Days recognized about this photographer, but didn't react on. Remember, they went through 10 other photographers, before settling on him. So what didn't they react on?

Lets start with the photographers age. At 23 years old, the odds of he, Mr. Bowers, being a great photographer, and a businessman, were pretty low. Photography, especially wedding photography, is a skill that is crafted over years of practice. At 23 years old, I was still a protegee, learning the ropes from a great photographer from Taiwan. It took me roughly two years to get good. Till this very day, I'm still learning with every shoot that I do. Business wise, I have to say I matured as a businessman at 27. I'm 32 now. And even now, till this very day, I'm still learning about business.

The Days also mentioned that it was very difficult to get a hold of their photographer. He wouldn't return phone calls or emails, even prior to their down payment. Like any relationship, communication is the key. Communication, is also a choice. A vendor is never too busy to return a phone call, even if their busy. It's very easy to devote 5 to 10 minutes of their time to a customer, potential or existing. I handle 20 plus weddings a month, and I am very easy to get a hold of. Now I may not call up family members of mine as often as I do clients, but again, that's a choice...haha.

Lastly, the Days took a look at Mr. Bowen's wedding album, and it looked great. But their photos did not come out as good. Honestly, you truly cannot tell how great a photographer is by just looking at one of his albums. Any amateur photographer can create a great wedding album. Any amateur photographer can also have 1 or 2 great references. What separates the pros from the wannabes is consistency.

You don't have to look at any entire album to recognize talent. You could possibly just look at a handful of pictures of different wedding couples, at different times of the day, different lighting conditions, BUT...AT THE SAME LOCATION. He may repeat some poses, and that's a good thing. The main question you want answered when looking at these photos is that he or she is able to produce a great shot, under different lighting conditions, with different people, at the same location. If he can, you got yourself a great photographer. Amateurs have a very difficult time replicating quality.

There are more things to note, but these are the major tell-tell signs to be on the lookout for.

With that being said, for those of you who booked with me, you can rest easy that I'm no like Mr. Bowers.

Well, I better get to bed. I have 2 weddings tomorrow and a football game to watch!


Steve Young
The Hawaii Wedding Reporter
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com/

Some couples have it all, good looks, a good job, a nice apartment, and a perfect partner in crime. This is the case of Cameron and Lindsey, a young couple whose incredible looks match their intelligence.

Cameron and Lindsey had contacted me close to one year before their wedding. They were not looking for anything very fancy. Just a simple wedding on the beach, with chairs, flowers, and a luau at Paradise Cove to follow. The total number of people in attendance to her wedding was around 28 or so. I really didn't expect there would be any complications in the planning, but the State of Hawaii would throw a pitchfork into her wedding plans.

I was a week before Lindsey's wedding when the State enacted an unconstitutional beach permit law that regulated all weddings and restricted chairs, arbors, and tables from appearing on the beach. The DLNR (Department of Land and Natural Resources) declared that they had enacted these regulations to protect the environment from the "harmful" impact which weddings had caused in the past (Are you kidding me?) One employee of the DLNR that I interviewed even told me that they were regulating weddings to save the environment and to control global warming. Someone is smoking some good weed in the DLNR office, that's all I have to say

I broke the word to Lindsey, and told her the State had tied my hands and every wedding company hands behind their backs. She truly wanted chairs at her wedding, but there was nothing I could do. If I did anything, it would risk having her wedding shut down by the State.

As expected, the curve ball, thrown by the State, didn't sit well with Lindsey at all. I had to think of something.

I contacted numerous lawyers for their advice on how to approach the situation. An ACLU lawyer had informed me that if Lindsey would book the chairs herself, it would not be considered a commercial activity, and would clearly not fall under the enforcement of the State. Therefore, setting up chairs would be her constitutional right to peacefully assemble to practice her freedom of speech and religion to get married on the beach. If the DLNR would stop her, the ACLU would gladly sue the State on her behalf and make her a happy millionaire. So that was it. The answer was simple. Lindsey would simply have to book the chairs on her own. Problem solved...bride happy.

By the way, the entire beach permit law is unconstitutional and the State is currently being sued by a very powerful constitutional attorney. I believe in about a year, beach permits will no longer be needed.

Once we got the chair fiasco handled, it was smooth sailing from there once again.

Since Cameron and Lindsey's Wedding consisted of a small bridal party, we elected to have a quick rehearsal a few days before their wedding on the beaches of Waikiki. Rehearsals are rather easy and help pull everything together. Their truly not needed, but having one helps calm a bride down. In total, rehearsals take about 5 minutes to coordinate, with 20 minutes tacked on in the beginning as we wait for all the participants in the processional to show up, basically friends and family.

As expected, everything ran very smooth on her wedding day. Cameron showed up with his friends and family early, and Lindsey soon filed in shortly after. Reverend Elias performed an excellent non-denominational Hawaiian wedding, and picture taking shortly followed.

The weather was perfect for their wedding. But it did get a little windy. So windy, Lindsey's veil blew off her head midway through the ceremony. We caught it on video, check it out.

The day of Cameron and Lindsey's wedding, the waves were extraordinarily large. The waves washed the sand into itself creating an overly turquoise look. It doesn't usually look like that.

As you probably have noticed, I'm posting quite a bit of their photos online. Lindsey had me take 5 rolls of film at her wedding since she had quite a few number of guest at her wedding, and for the fact that she wanted her reception covered. Hope your enjoying the pics!

What I really liked about Cameron and Lindsey was for the fact that they were very easy to photograph. Not only were they photogenic, but they just fell naturally into poses. I didn't really have to pose them. They just had fun, and I literally tried to capture the moment. I love it when I don't have to think.

After the picture taking, we headed to Paradise Cove, where their guest were already waiting for them. It was my first visit to the Luau, and I have to say the food wasn't that bad. You can read my review by clicking here. I do believe though, that Germaine's Luau is a bit better.

Cameron and Lindsey met through a mutual friend. They had been together three years prior to getting married. That means around year two, they got engaged. What brought them together? I'm thinking similar personalities, and similar intellect, maybe even similar interest in airplanes. Like I had mentioned before, both Cameron and Lindsey are extraordinarily smart. They both work for an airline manufacturer in Long Beach, so that tells you something right there....they are going to have some very smart kids one day!

I wish you two my very best.


Steve Young
The Hawaii Wedding Report
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com

The average age of most of my wedding couples hovers around the 30's. The bride, usually younger than the groom, is usually in her late 20's or early 30's. The groom, usually in his mid to late 30's. They say, 30 is the new 20, and I can see why. Most men and women are getting married 10 years after what was considered the norm back in the 70's. My mother got married in her early 20's, and my dad, well he was in his mid 20's.

As for John and Kayla, they did it the old fashioned style. They were high school sweethearts, and a little after they both graduated high school, they decided to tie the knot.

So it was Kayla who first hit on John, according to Kayla's mother. And she literally hit him. With what I don't know. But I know it's not a tire iron. John at first didn't take to Kayla, calling her names such as "Barbie doll." But that opinion quickly changed. I guess John wised up. There's nothing wrong with having a skinny girl at your side. Trust me on that one.

In attendance to this young couple's wedding was both of their parents, and nothing more. No friends or enemies were present. It was a small affair, and very intimate. Performing the ceremony was Reverend Elias Parker, who did a stellar job as always. And there was this awesome photographer at their wedding...hmm..wait, that was me! haha.

John and Kayla tied the knot at one of my favorite beaches, unofficially labeled Secret Cove. It truly has no official name. Secret Cove is great for pictures, as the setting and lighting is perfect (if you know what you're doing).



I can tell you right now that a lot of wedding photographers struggle with taking pictures at this cove because the sun can cast a very harsh side-light. This side-light makes it very difficult for digital photographers. It can light up one side of a subjets face, and leave the other dark. If a photographer isn't careful, his or her shadow can be in the shot! The side-light can also make the wedding ceremony rather difficult, as either the bride or groom could be staring directly into the sun during the wedding ceremony if they are not positioned correctly.

The side lighting was so severe during John and Kayla's wedding, Elias and I decided to have the sun as the actual background for their wedding. With the sun as the background, John and Kayla could face each other, without squinting. Now for digital photographers, positioning the sun directly behind the minister, would be a disaster. The result would be a white washed out sky, and tons of photoshop work to fix skin tones. But for a film photographer, this really wouldn't be much of a problem, in fact it was a dream...as it was special effects time!

So that camera mumbo jumbo you read above here, that basically means I'm underexposing this shot, and using the flash to fill in for the foreground. If it wasn't for my flash, John and Kayla would be nothing but sillouttes.

I have to say, I truly envy John and Kayla. I always wondered what it would be like if I married my high school sweetheart. Of course, now that I think about it, I didn't have a sweetheart. It was just me stalking one of my favorite blond friends....good times...good times. All joking aside, planning weddings, taking pictures at weddings, doing the video, etc...etc... It's just really cool being part of peoples lives as they start a new chapter in their life. Every love story I hear is truly unique, and it truly gets you thinking, that there is such thing as destiny.

Man, I'm getting too sentimental and deep.



Steven Young
The Hawaii Wedding Reporter
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com/

I don't get hired for many local weddings. It's really not by choice, but it's because I don't advertise my services locally. My advertising for Dream Weddings Hawaii consists of making sure my website falls on the 1st page of Google. Local Brides usually book through wedding shows, and don't use the web as much of a research/booking tool as often as destination brides. But as of late, that trend has been reversing. Enter Justin and Tamara, a local couple who found me on the web.

Justin and Tamara met me at one of my favorite fast food restaurants, Taco Del Mar, to talk about their wedding plans. Tamara immediately told me that she wanted to keep everything simple, that she and Justin just wanted to tie the knot with a few family friends around, on the beaches of Ko'olina. It sounded pretty straight forward and easy right? Wrong. A few days later, Tamara called up and told me that her and Justin's entire family wanted to be there for the wedding, which amounted up to a total of a few hundred people in attendance.

Tamara and Justin kicked around a few different ideas for wedding venues and finally decided to get married at Justin's father's workplace. Justin's father owns some type of industrial commercial business that has to do with landscaping or something very similar. His complex consists of large open parcels of flat land that is dedicated to housing his equipment. On one parcel though, a neatly landscaped area was made for family gatherings. This area is where Justin and Tamara decided to get married.

Although the wedding site where Justin and Tamara got married was well manicured, the rest of surrounding land was very industrial looking, making it very difficult to take pictures. I really couldn't get much of a clean shot, and my angles were very limited. If I moved too much to the left or right in some shots, I would get a bulldozer in the background. I came to the conclusion that I really had to utilize the surroundings, and make do with what I had.

The happy couple met through friends and grew closer as time went by. They did, like I would like to say, the new-fashioned way. They got kids, got a house, then got married. Isn't that way it's done most of the time these days?

Justin and Tamara's wedding I believe, did not cost them that much, despite having a rather large gathering of family and friends. A typical local wedding will run a couple anywhere between 15k to 35k. Yes, I know that's a lot! I couldn't imagine spending that much money in one day. But I believe Justin and Tamara spent only around 3k to 5k for their wedding, or maybe even less.. How'd they do it? Well, they got friends and family to help them with everything from food to entertainment, to chairs, and tenting. So that should be a good lesson to all you brides out there planning a wedding in your home town. If you want to save money, get your family to help out.

Opposites attract, and that's the lesson learned from Justin and Tamara. Tamara is the talkative one, Justin, is quiet. But one thing they both have in common, their both great parents.

I wish you my best.

Steve Young
The Hawaii Wedding Report
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com