To me this is the most important question to ask any wedding supplier when planning your wedding.

However it is one that I am rarely asked! Couples always comment that they had never thought of asking it. 

So, what is this essential question you should ask every supplier involved in your wedding? 

What are your back up plans?

It is so important to ask this question, after all it is such a special day, you will want it to go as smoothly as possible. Every supplier you book you need to be able to trust them to carry out their role and if they can’t, what would happen? What are their back up plans?

When I meet with couples I will always go through my back up plans to reassure them that I have thought of everything and that they can trust me to carry out my job. In this post I will share with you my back up plans and tell you about a real situation I was in recently.

What happens if I am ill?

When you book Capture this Moment Photography – you book me – Kathryn, so what happens if I am ill. I am part of a network of local wedding photographers who I can call upon to cover if needed to. Each one I know personally and they are normally the people I would recommend if I was already booked. I trust them to be able to capture your day as I would. 

What happens if your equipment fail? 

On your wedding day I shoot with 2 professional cameras and with a variety of lenses. Both cameras have two memory card slots so I have a back up of your images as I work. Both cameras are on my person for pretty much the whole day, to be honest I look a bit like John Wane with my holster on.

Now, recently I was in a situation where both cameras I had on me both came up with an error message and stopped working!

Read on to find out more about this situation and how I coped with this to ensure those memories were captured to last a lifetime.

Last summer I was  invited to capture a very special birthday at a local venue, family and friends have travelled from near and far to come together to celebrate, many family members haven’t seen each other for many years. I was asked to capture some family groups as well as document the celebrations. The weather is perhaps not its best today, high winds and heavy rain, but I knew I could capture the groups in a certain part of venue knowing the guests would be sheltered from the rain, so everyone assembled for the shot when my camera stopped working – an error message came up, not too worry I always carry a second camera. So I quickly swapped cameras, set up the shot and press the shutter to receive the same error message. Both cameras had stopped working and I was unable to record these moments for the family.Luckily, I was just 5 minutes away from home and have 2 more camera bodies and a spare set of lenses, a quick dash home and I was back in action ready to capture the these moments for this family.On your wedding day, I will not have just 2 cameras with me, there will be another two with a variety of lenses, memory cards and batteries all safely onboard my car.

What are my back up plans once I have shot your wedding?

As I mentioned earlier, both of the cameras that I primarily shot with have two memory card slots which I back up your images as I am working, however when I arrive home, I will carry out another back up of those images overnight – by the next morning they will be five copies of your wedding day. If I have a holiday planned before I have finished editing your wedding – one set of memory cards will come with me – so far I have taken them to North Wales, Cornwall, Canada, South Africa, Barcelona and Norway – I will always let you know if I am going away soon after your wedding so you know what is happening. One copy stays at home in the safe. There are copies in secure cloud storage too.It is so important to know how your suppliers will cope if there is a problem especially on special occasions when it is not an option to recreate those memories.I hope this answers this question but also reassures you to trust me to capture your memories. If you have any further check out my faqs or drop me a message and I will do my best to answer any questions you may have.