It’s magic

I owned a magic trick once. It consisted of a small wooden ball and a slightly larger hollow hemisphere. By holding the two parts between adjacent fingers I was supposed to be able to make one ball disappear – as long as you overlooked the rather obvious difference in size of the two elements.

I adore magic tricks and the magicians I admire most are table magicians, those who are so clever, so confident, they let people stand on every side and as close as possible.

And they’re the very best “extra” you can buy for a wedding reception, party or corporate reception for those who understand their job as well as their craft will ensure that no-one is left alone, waiting for another stranger to introduce themselves. Nor will they force themselves on the event, interrupting the meal or lively conversation.

The best I have ever seen is Mark Southworth. Quiet, unassuming, he works his craft around the room, engaging the singleton and gathering a group which continues to grow after he’s performed his tricks and moved on. Once the first course has been served he’s invisible because unless you’re a child hoping he’ll make a scoop of ice cream into three, no-one wants their meal to be interrupted with a magician, no matter how good he is.

I first saw Mark a few years ago. His tricks then engaged and amazed guests in the lull after the reception breakfast and before the cabaret. More recently I saw him again. His tricks have kept up with the times and now involve cards which morph from the screen of a mobile phone (yours, not his!) into his hand – and still have your signature on the face.

Compared with some of the entertainment you can spend your wedding budget on Mark Southworth is far and away top value. He ain’t cheap, but then in table magicians as in everything else, you get what you pay for – and in Mark Southworth, you get the best.  You can reach Mark at 01257 264011 or 07786387721.

All’s fair in love and weddings…

Just recently we took a stand at a Wedding Fair at Sandhole Oak Barn located in the Cheshire countryside near Congleton.  We only attend one other fair each year, so you might be interested in why we made this exception.  Quite apart from the fact that it is probably the most attractive and well-run wedding venue in the north of England, the event was the best-organised, best-value and consequently, the best-attended we’ve seen for years.  And, since we’re not paid to write such glowing reports, let me explain.

I don’t think I’ve met a modern bride who hasn’t endured a Wedding Fair – or as some organisers call them “Wedding Fayres” using quaint, archaic spelling to suggest they’re a long-standing part of the wedding business.  They’re not of course.  Before the average wedding cost £10,000 or more they just didn’t happen.  In those days, the average girl wore a dress made by a talented friend or relative, her groom wore his best suit or perhaps bought a new one from Burtons, the Fifty-Shilling Tailor, and guests were happy with a stand-up buffet at the local pub or hotel.

Don’t get me wrong, wedding fairs can be very useful.  Couples, or more usually, the bride, her mother and maybe a bridesmaid, get the opportunity to see something of what the local wedding business is offering – but “something” is the word.  To imagine that they’ll see everything or even every category of wedding supplier is simply self-delusion.

First, most wedding fairs are themselves a part of the wedding industry – and everybody pays.  The organiser, often the publisher of a local wedding magazine, charges each supplier between £250 and £1500 for their 6ft space – usually a standard hotel table.  Then there’s an entrance fee for every visitor, typically £3 to £10 but each visitor will also have to provide their postal or e-mail address which means another deluge of unwanted spam and mail – and that, incidentally, is why most people provide false details!

Second, the cost of participation means that many suppliers providing desirable but relatively inexpensive wedding services (say a musician, a table magician or a balloon bender to entertain the children – all suppliers charging modest fees) simply can’t justify the cost of taking a stand so don’t expect to meet many of them.

So, wedding fairs lend themselves to certain types of supplier – but, like the owners of shopping malls, the organisers distort the scene by limiting the number of any one category of supplier and by controlling what other suppliers can do.  For example, all but the largest events include only three or four photographers – and very few organisers allow wedding dress suppliers space for potential clients to try on their dresses.  Interestingly the organisers place no limit on the number of photographers wanting to buy advertising space in their magazines – if you’ve got the money they’ve got the paper.

You’ll have gathered by now that the organiser of the Sandhole Oak Bar wedding fair isn’t a magazine publisher; it’s true she selects suppliers which in her view offer products and services of a quality to match the venue and charges them a reasonable fee for the publicity she gives the event, but entrance for visitors is free.  Refreshments offered by one of the two caterers who operate at the venue are modestly priced (unlike most hotels which will ask £3+ for a cup of instant coffee).  And most significant of all, there’s no catwalk show.

With few exceptions, wedding fair catwalk shows are the most tawdry elements at weddings fairs.  First, they’re staged by a local wedding dress shop.  These shops, often single unit businesses, can’t afford the cost of professional models which means the dresses are “displayed” by shop staff or the “Saturday” girls who are self-conscious and inept.  Most haven’t been trained how to walk, how to show the garments to their best advantage, or sometimes even how to stand up straight.  Worse, thanks to the way dress manufacturers control the business, the amateur models don’t wear dresses that fit them but those which are nearest to their size.  That means slim girls wearing dresses which touch at just a few places and plump girls who overflow from dresses simply too small for them.

Accompanying the catwalk shows will be DJs with loudspeakers big enough for a large family of Hobbits.  Records and CDs are invariably a thing of the past – most music is now played in from a laptop computer – I wonder how many brides realise their evening entertainment relies on a computer not going belly up in the middle of the first dance.  The skills of most DJs are limited to rebooting their computer and turning up the volume but along with the amateur models on the catwalk they effectively bring the rest of the typical wedding fair to a standstill for two periods of 30-45 minutes out of a four-hour fair.

And frankly it’s all so unnecessary.  When I was a lad, Saturday mornings were devoted to the weekly shop and occasionally my parents would treat us to coffee at the town’s main department store.  Throughout the morning the store’s mannequins circulated amongst the tables showing off the latest fashions and chatting to ladies who showed an interest in the clothes.  “Soft sell” I suppose they’d call it these days but it had the unique advantage that the clothes were seen “in action” on live models – presumably much more persuasive than hanging them on a rail or display figure.

Why wedding fair organisers don’t stage their dress shows this way is beyond me.  The ordeal for the amateur models would be less and they could walk around the fair wearing the various garments for much longer than they’d be displayed on a catwalk; the space freed up by removing the catwalk and chairs would mean wider spaces between the stalls.  In fact, I’m told that some years ago, Selfridges showed their wedding garments this way.  They don’t seem to be active in the market these days, but perhaps it’s time to remind wedding fair organisers that there’s no law against copying good ideas.

So, is it worth going to wedding fairs at all?  Of course it is, just be aware of their limitations.

The best of times, the worst of times……

In many respects television has taken over from newspapers the role of exposing unfair business practices, rogue traders, corporate rip-offs etc, yet examples still crop up from time to time.

Finding wedding suppliers who offer genuine good value is sometimes as difficult as locating a good plumber or a competent painter and decorator.  One solution is to commission the services of a wedding planner but these people will often demand both a fee from the bridal client and a commission from the various wedding suppliers they recommend.  Both mean extra cost for the bridal couple and there’s enough evidence to show that even then, you’re not certain of a trouble-free event.

Of course, planning a wedding is hard work, not rocket science, and our advice is always to do your own research and to decide for yourself which supplier offers good value and reliable service.  Don’t rely on testimonials (when did you ever read a bad one?) or on recommendations of people you don’t know well; after all, one person’s dance band is another person’s ear ache!

Think twice also about recommended suppliers.  Recently we’ve come across well-known and popular wedding venues which not only charge a lot of money for their venues – but they then make even more by demanding substantial commissions from photographers and others whose services they “recommend”.  Actually this gets worse because some popular private houses also demand commissions for allowing photographers to even work on their premises.  And you already know who really pays this commission – you do, in the form of higher prices.

So what’s the solution?  It’s easy, though it does involve some time and research – ask the questions and compare the prices and service you’re offered.  If you’re in any doubt, avoid all recommended suppliers and choose one that suits you best.

Now, bearing in mind what you’ve just read, you might be surprised that we’re going to close by offering you a recommendation – but it’s a recommendation we suggest you consider for yourself.

Francesca Spedding is a singer; in our opinion, a very good and attractive singer.  She’s experienced, versatile and, very important for a wedding singer, knows the role she plays as part of your wedding.  She sang for one of our recent clients, not only at the ceremony but during the drinks reception, for the First Dance and, later in the evening as the cabaret entertainment.

Singers have to do much more than sing in tune, they have to “know their place” as well.  What impressed us especially was the way Francesca adapted her performance and style to each part of the day.  During the ceremony she performed the clients’ favourite songs, providing a unique musical background to the formality; during the drinks reception her music added gentle style and harmony behind the conversation between old friends and family, then in the evening she took centre stage and became the star turn of the party and dance.

But, as we’ve said throughout this piece, don’t take our word for it.  Listen to the songs she sings on her website (www.femalesoloartist.co.uk) and arrange to meet her yourself.  We don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Abby and Peter’s wedding

Recorded at a tiny Unitarian chapel and at Mottram Hall by PHP Weddings.

Abby and Peter’s “Dream” wedding from Philip Howells on Vimeo.

The music Abby and Peter chose to accompany this compilation of their wedding day was cleared by PHP Weddings for their DVD disks.  However, the clearance does not include broadcast on the Internet so we have substituted another piece of our own music for this showing.

Things we don’t do

We learned long ago the folly of trying to be all things to all people, yet with a business in one part of television (production) it’s inevitable that people, unfamiliar with the technology, assume that we do everything in television.

One of the topics which crops up regularly is film to DVD or digital file conversion. Often these requests come from our existing clients who, delighted with the wedding videos we’ve made for them, decide they’d like to have their parents wedding films converted to DVD. Often these films are 8mm or Super-8, the main formats available to amateurs 20 or 30 years ago. Until recently, most conversion of these formats involved projecting the film and recording the image on a video camera and none was satisfactory.

Now that’s all changed. Now there’s equipment which scans each frame of the film, much as a flatbed scanner does, and reconstitutes the scans into a digital file replicating the original film. The results are superb, colours as vivid as the original film and just as sharp; the images are stable and the exposure equal across the whole image – none of the “hotspots” projection systems produced.

PHP weddings doesn’t offer this service, but, as the saying goes, we know a man who does.

It’s a company called “CineFilm2DVD.com” in Northwich, Cheshire. There are other firms too but we recommend CineFilm2DVD.com because their service is thorough, they’re professionals, not hobbyists and their prices are very competitive. Many of their clients are broadcast television companies. Perhaps most important of all, they’re enthusiasts and have worked in film for as long as we’ve been in video – and, before you ask, no, we’re not on commission!

Why don’t we gush?

At a recent wedding fair I was asked why our blog is so unlike other companies’ blogs.

It’s true, we don’t spend time telling you “what a wonderful wedding we recorded last week, how the bride looked stunning and the event was simply heaven to be at” – all that gushing, celebrity mag sort of thing.

There are two reasons why we’re different. First, regardless of where they’d come in the airbrushed celebrity mags, every one of our brides looks simply stunning on the day. Secondly, making sure the event’s a success is part of our job, along with all the other suppliers. In reality that means making sure that any little problems that arise aren’t noticed by the bride and groom and are never allowed to become big problems.

In fact, that part of our job starts almost as soon as the girl slips on her engagement ring for the first time. Every decision the couple make about their wedding has the propensity to become a disaster because unfortunately the wedding business has as many sharks and conmen as the plumbing trade.

Here’s a few we’ve encountered personally.

Dress shops that sell the bride a wedding dress which patently doesn’t fit; menswear hire companies which send out suits without buttons; wedding cars that break down because they’ve not been serviced; church organists who play as if they’ve seventeen fingers on each hand; hotels which discount the price of the food for the wedding breakfast but double the bar prices to compensate; photographers who behave as if the church is a studio not a place of worship and think the entire day’s a photo shoot; DJs who insist on playing every record at full volume; and video cameramen who simply don’t know their craft or the art and skill of making television programmes.

How does the bridal couple avoid these pitfalls? Mainly by checking out the truth of every claim or statement that’s made. Most important is to ignore testimonials supposedly from other couples – “Thanks for a great DVD, you’re a star – Jason and Lynn” – even if Jason and Lynn are actually real people and not figments of the video producer’s imagination, would their message be printed if it wasn’t complimentary? When did you last see a testimonial which said, “My bouquet fell apart before I reached the church but the flowers on the altar were OK. I’d certainly recommend ABC florists etc”?

And finally, don’t rely on what other couples tell you. Referrals are supposed to be the best recommendations but in reality they’re only as good as the other couple’s taste and judgement. Some people like McDonalds, others Burger King, and still others detest all hamburgers. Whose advice should you take?

It’s the same with wedding suppliers, check out exactly what you’re buying – which is the message underlying most of the articles you’ll read in this blog. Caveat emptor – let the buyer beware – is always the best advice we ever give.

And people actually pay for this…..

Like us, the cameramen and women who record your wedding video, your photographer is with you for most of your wedding day. Some excellent wedding photographers like John Brandwood and Daniel Killoran, share our view – that our job is to record your happy day – and then to let you enjoy it as well. That means getting our work done then leaving you to spend as much of the day as possible with your family and friends.

Sadly, it isn’t how all photographers work – as this honest description of one of our recent weddings shows.

First the photographer spends over three hours snapping the bride’s preparation. When we arrive at 10.30am (early because of prudence regarding the traffic) the bride is ready to roll for her 1pm wedding. All she has to do is put her dress on. The photographer arrived an hour before us and is now working his way through every leaf of her bouquet and then the bridesmaids. The church is 12 minutes away so we have enough time to shoot our prep section, do the bride interview and enjoy a coffee and a scone at a garden centre on the way.

Despite her commendable preparation and organisation the bride arrives at the church at 1.10pm.

At 1.40pm the pastor (who is wearing our radio mic) is recorded saying to the photographer, “if you don’t stop taking photos right now, there will be no wedding. No, not one more.”

At 2.10pm the wedding party leaves the church. It is raining, not lightly – this is July in Manchester, come on. The photographer begins to work his way through several A5 sheets of formals shots – in the deluge. The ladies’ hair-do’s are collapsing; the dresses are becoming more transparent as they soak up the rain like sheets of Plenty; the stretched Hummer’s engine is overheating; the biodegradable confetti is biodegrading in the guests’ hands; the pastor has locked the church and gone home to his lunch and most of the guests are wishing they’d gone with him.

At 2.30pm the wedding car arrives at the hotel – where weddings are exquisitely run by the most charming yet organised wedding co-ordinator in the land. The rain ceases and the sun comes out. The wedding guests, who’ve retreated to the cocktail bar are summoned by the photographer to the lawn, still sparklingly drenched by the previous morning’s rain. Only those who are reeling from paying £4 a pint for the local brew or £3.50 for a small cup of coffee are at all happy. (When coffee costs more than Starbucks you know you’re being screwed.)

The hotel’s Wedding Organiser puts back the time for the guests to enter the breakfast room to 4.15pm. She knows this photographer.

At 4.05pm the photographer accedes to the wedding party’s demand to stop posing them in the most ludicrous and unlikely set-ups ever devised by man or Nijinsky and allows them to meet their guests. If you thought the top hat-throw or the ushers line-run was corny you ain’t seen this photographer’s “Jazz-it-up” pose – he even gives them names! That consists of B&G and a dozen attendants crouching down whilst looking up with arms outstretched à la Al Jolson snapped from a hotel dining chair which is sinking into the sodden lawn even as he clicks. This is not a photographer but a failed designer of synchronised swimming routines in which the swimmers routinely drowned. At the front door to the hotel, the waiter who’s been standing rock-steady ready with glasses of Buck’s Fizz on a silver salver for the bride and groom since 1.45pm presents his cocktails and begins to relieve the rigor mortis into which his elbow has set.

The speeches precede the breakfast. We have our three cameras in two positions, advised to the photographer in writing days before the wedding. Is it beyond the whit of any photographic college student to devise other positions or angles around the room from which to snap people talking? Not this one.

During the speeches we discover that for all his loud-mouth bragging about his £1600 lenses to the bride’s step-father who’s had the temerity to bring his Nikon D3s along to snap the girl, the photographer has no idea how wide the zoom lens of our cameras are and insists on standing in one side of our safety shot frame despite repeated requests not to. When he does move it’s to the front of our third camera sited to record the guests’ reactions. His rationale appears to be if the video people have taken those positions then those must be “the ones”. I suppose we should be flattered that the photographer thinks we’ve chosen the top two places but we aren’t. One is left with the distinct impression that the photographer spends his evenings devising ever-more extreme and unlikely poses and “creative situations” as if his only USP (marketing-speak for difference) is how bizarre he can make his clients look.

The evening reception includes several dozen more guests – whose first thought is to find out which salon did the bridesmaids’ hair and remember not to go there.

They are treated to a lavish event including white and milk chocolate fountains, a beautiful ice sculpture to hold the seating plan and a spectacular champagne luge carved from a piece of glacier you last saw falling off the Antarctic ice shelf into the Ross Sea.

And where are their hosts, the new Mr and Mrs? Oh they’re being creatively snapped by the photographer, whilst illuminated by his “several thousand pounds worth” of flashgun and the moonlight glancing off the raindrops on the still-soaking greensward.

So what conclusions can you draw from this example? Firstly that whilst this guy’s not alone, there are some very excellent wedding photographers around. Secondly, price is not a perfect guide – this example is not a £250 all in con-man but a high priced wedding photography business. Perhaps the best advice is not to rely on the pictures (they’ll never show you bad ones) or testimonials (when did you last see a bad testimonial?) but to visit some and meet them face to face. Make sure you’re meeting the photographer himself and that he’ll be doing the job himself on the day. Most important of all, trust your instinct. This person’s probably going to be around most of the day so it’s important you choose someone you feel you can get on with.

Get me to the church – if you can afford it

It’s reported today that the Church of England is raising its prices for weddings, not by the rate of inflation or the RPI but by 100%. In fairness it is also incorporating some of the extras which, like cheap seats on Ryanair, couples often found themselves paying for on top of the basic price, but it’s still a whacking increase.

It’s hard to understand the logic. At a time when fewer and fewer people are getting married and fewer and fewer of those are getting married in church, raising the price seems a strange path to take.

However, what the Church isn’t saying is that in return for the increased fees couples will pay they will definitely be able to have a photos and a video recorded of their ceremony. It appears that that decision will still remain up to the Vicar or the Parochial Church Council.

Of course everybody knows some horror stories about the ways cameramen behave and we’ve seen some asked to leave the church – and quite rightly – because they’re destroying the dignity and solemnity of the occasion. But those tend to be the cheap hobbyists or amateurs; we’ve yet to see a pro behave in anything but a professional manner.

Every professional cameraman, still or video, expects to keep still and silent during the service, but providing they do, it behooves the Vicar or PCC to recognise that, in return for their quite substantial fee, they should at least make it possible for the pros to work.

After all, every day there are more and more alternative venues licenced for weddings.

I personally find the church an uplifting place for the ceremony – especially if compared to a hotel conference suite which it’s difficult to disguise as anything else – but if the Church of England wants to encourage couples to marry in church someone needs to look at their marketing decisions.

Venue advice

We all know things are difficult economically but that doesn’t seem to me to justify some of the corporate greed that’s cropping up.

One of the nearby quality local hotels, part of a well-known chain has signed up with a company to instal TV screens in its leisure club and this company is selling advertising space on these screens. Note that there is no sound on the screens.

The hotel already has screens in the main hotel area – another supplier and another contract – currently up for re-negotiation I’m told.

It also has a preferred supplier list which includes wedding suppliers.

And twice a year it has a wedding fair organised (for a fee) by a company that also publishes a wedding magazine.

That’s four potential revenue streams, all promoting the single resource behind them all – the hotel. And what is the real value advertisers are getting?

Only two of the six TV screens in the leisure club are a decent size (46″) – the reminder are 26″ and located in the changing rooms – though just what value there is in silent advertising to people getting showered and changed is beyond me.

The hotel declines to hold or distribute the advertising material of any supplier – “too much trouble” – and the only way to get a stand (£250 for 4 hours) at the wedding fair is to take print advertising with the magazine.

Now I’m a committed free market person but all this one-sided promotion stands in contrast to the hotel’s reported desire to attract a “better class of wedding”.

Happily this isn’t a universal situation.

I know of two reputable hotels in our area, one part of a national chain, the other independent, which are taking the economic situation head on – in conjunction with suppliers, not subsidised by them. Rates for supplier participation at their events have been lowered, not raised and suppliers invited on the basis of their reputation and track record with the hotel, not merely their ability to pay.

Good reputations are the toughest things to gain and the easiest to lose. If you’re looking for a venue for a wedding, don’t rely on the name alone when drawing up your list of possibles – visit as many as you can yourself and make up your own mind.

The Perfect Venue

No-one believes Fawlty Towers really exists, but, like many wedding professionals I know far too many wedding venue hotels which come very close.

The problem is that, unlike Fawlty Towers, these hotels will often have one key redeeming feature and brides, unable to get this single overwhelming feature out of their mind, bend or ignore all other considerations to ensure they have this venue for their big day.

The problem is that the disadvantages the brides have managed to minimise, or block out of their minds altogether are the features that will come back to haunt them come the wedding day.

Although couples might not use these terms, there’s a theatre about a wedding, especially the ceremony which is one reason why churches, with their towering ceilings, immense columns and rich echoes are still chosen by couples who aren’t otherwise especially religious.

Creating that sense of theatre in a hotel room that was a training room until Friday evening and will be a conference venue first thing on Monday morning isn’t easy. Standard hotel ceiling heights and bland decorations suitable for everyone and ideal for none simply don’t inspire the mood. Some of the drawbacks of a less-than-ideal venue can be overcome – at a cost, but others will remain to spoil your day no matter what.

So what are some of these problems and what’s the solution?

First and after years of experience, my rule of thumb would be to reduce the maximum capacity the hotel says their room accommodates by 20%. Hotels aren’t just there to meet your needs; they’re there to make as much money as possible and the two objectives aren’t always the same.

And the reason for recommending this reduction isn’t just to preserve the “theatre” of the event. The other resources of the hotel will match the realistic numbers of guests it can handle at one time. Exceed the recommended number and the car park may overflow; invite more guests than the recommended number and the kitchens may not be able to cope and so on.

So how can you avoid this scenario? Here’s some simple steps:

1 Ignore the hotel’s estimate of the maximum capacity of the rooms. Even if they’re accurate, they don’t allow for any space for the theatre of the wedding. We recorded a wedding at a very well-known venue in Hampshire. The space was so limited the bride’s beautiful and expensive dress was draped over her father’s knees and at the end of the ceremony she and her new husband left the room in single file. For a perfect day reduce the capacity by 20%.

2 Don’t rely on the hotel to tell you truth. Within limits they will do anything to encourage you to book your wedding with them. If the quoted maximum for a sit-down meal is 100 not only will that already be a squeeze, but, if you press them hard enough, they’ll probably stretch to 120. Happy? You might think you are but in reality you’ll find all the other facilities will be geared to a maximum of 100 guests; the car park, the toilets, the bar and, most importantly, the kitchens. If any or all of those are important to you, think carefully.

3 Now let’s imagine that your dream hotel has none of these disadvantages – and they do exist – how about your elderly relatives? A country house hotel with only nine rooms isn’t obliged to provide a lift so if your aged granny is in a wheelchair ……

In contrast a modern hotel will meet every need for the disabled, there’ll be stacks of parking, the bars (an important profit centre) will almost certainly be huge so there’ll be no question of waiting for a drink and their kitchens will probably be large enough to cope with perhaps two simultaneous conferences. So is your “dream” venue the right place to choose? I can’t answer that but what I can assure you is that finding a venue that honestly ticks all the boxes will be a miracle so be prepared to accept some compromises and you won’t be disappointed.