St. Louis, MO- June 28, 2011– WeddingWire, the nation’s leading site for wedding reviews, just announced that Artistic Soup Photographyis WeddingWire Rated 2011 for Wedding Photography and Open Air Photo Booth Photography. WeddingWire Rated is an annual award program for wedding professionals based on hundreds of thousands of recent wedding reviews.

WeddingWire Rated, the industry’s first formalized review program, is the most recognized and trusted brand among engaged couples looking to locate wedding businesses. The award program recognizes wedding professionals across the country, like Artistic Soup Photography, that have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to service.

Artistic Soup Photography has 54 reviews on WeddingWire. These reviews have been written by past clients of Artistic Soup Photography, and include detailed ratings and insightful descriptions of the newlyweds’ experience. From quality of service to overall level of professionalism, these reviews showcase the high level of service newly engaged couples can expect from Artistic Soup Photography.

“We are excited to unveil WeddingWire Rated, now in its fourth year, as a way to recognize wedding professionals for their commitment to service,” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s CEO. “WeddingWire Rated allows wedding businesses to clearly differentiate themselves in their market, while providing engaged couples an easy way to find the best services for their wedding.”

Artistic Soup Photography would like to thank their past clients for sharing reviews of their weddings on WeddingWire. Reviews for Artistic Soup Photography can be found across the entire WeddingWire Network, which includes WeddingWire, Martha Stewart Weddings, Project Wedding and Weddingbee.

For more information, please visit Artistic Soup Photography  on WeddingWire at http://www.weddingwire.com/biz/artistic-soup-photography-creve-coeur/0bbb486e0c9cd191.html

About WeddingWire, Inc.
WeddingWire, the nation’s leading technology company serving the $70 billion wedding industry, is the only online wedding planning resource designed to empower both engaged couples and wedding professionals. For engaged couples, WeddingWire offers the ability to search, compare and book over 100,000 local wedding vendors, from wedding venues to wedding photographers to wedding cakes. WeddingWire also offers an online community and a suite of cutting-edge planning tools for weddings, including wedding websites, all at no charge. For wedding professionals, WeddingWire provides free online management tools creating the only market opportunity that gives local businesses control over their clients, reviews, leads and performance. Businesses that join the WeddingWire Network appear on WeddingWire.com and other leading sites, including MarthaStewartWeddings.com, ProjectWedding.com and Weddingbee.com (both part of eHarmony), and Celebrations.com (part of the 1-800-Flowers family of brands).

To a professional wedding photographer the work for a couple’s wedding just begins after the wedding day is done.  Many don’t realize most of a professional wedding photographer’s time is spent in front of the computer processing and editing for hours on end.  The average editing time or 2 photographers for an all day wedding is 30 to 40 hours.  This is without doing special effects or major retouching but just general edits such as the one’s displayed below.

Many times in public parks such as the Arch Grounds especially on a beautiful day there is a sea of people to work around.  Some you can truly work around while others you just know you have to edit out later.  Here is an example of that fix.  Plus a little brightening and lighting of the overall image was done.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

This couple chose a absolutely gorgeous setting for their wedding at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It was truly picture perfect minus the “horns” growing out of their heads from the trees in the background. Nothing a little editing won’t fix.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Part of the standard service Artistic Soup Photography provides is to do all these edits upfront so your images loaded to your online viewing & print ordering portal AND the images provided on your Hi-RES DVD are just as the should be…Picture Perfect.

St. Louis Wedding Photography, St. Louis Wedding Photographers, St. Louis Weddings

This blog post is a result of a common correspondence that we often have with prospective clients before they book with us.  Therefore we decided to share it as a friendly educational tool for those looking to work with a professional wedding photography company.

Prospective Clients Comment:

I’ll be real honest – I thought your wedding photography prices were high, but now that I have looked around I find that your prices are very comparable to everyone else’s and in many cases less.

Our Friendly Educating Reply:

Yes, we understand prospective clients at first have little to no knowledge of the work, training, equipment and reassurances involved that dictate the price of wedding photography and then there is also the hobbyists out there that charge much less but people don’t realize unless they have knowledge of nightmare experiences from family and friends that the hobbyist do not have the pro equipment, back up equipment, back up photographers, reliability, processes, customer service and skill that also muddy the waters in understanding.

We try our best to educate our prospective clients but until people shop around or consult friends and family we understand it is a learning process that takes time.

Shooting the wedding when clients actually view us first hand at work is actually the least amount of work time involved for a wedding.

The other parts that clients do not realize or do not see is: charging up all the equipment for the big day; answering emails and phone calls and attending meetings in preparation for the big day; doing the hours of processing and general retouching; uploading all the files to the online portal for viewing and ordering; archiving all files for security purposes; burning the DVDs and sending them to the clients; and if an album is ordered the days it takes to design an album.  And to do all this well takes
time which is all incorporated into the pricing.

Artistic Soup Photography humbly is aware of the quality, talent, customer service, education and equipment we provide for the amount we charge.  We are a good value for our reassurances, skill and customer service.  You will not find the level of offering we provide for less with the assurances
we provide (backup equipment and backup photographers).  We receive consistent positive reviews from our clients.  We believe this praise from our clients speaks volumes regarding the quality of service we provide.  We love what we do, we have years of training and education invested in our craft and offer the best quality service for the best price in the St. Louis area.

Thank you for reading! We hope you found this insight into the work involved helpful.

This dynamic and super hip Portland, Oregon couple is giving Artistic Soup Wedding Photography the honor of photographing their special day in June at the City Museum in St. Louis and we are ohhh so very excited even more so after photographing their engagement session this past weekend downtown. Their energy…great! Their location choice…awesome! And not to mention they look like a model couple! Needless to say…we loved it! And can’t wait for more…

St. Louis Wedding Photography, St. Louis Wedding Photographers

Artistic Soup Photography had the privilege of photographing Kelly’s Bridal Shower this past Sunday, March 14th, 2010.

Sarah created an amazing tropically themed Bridal Shower for her sister Kelly including a cabanna hut, seashells, palm tree cupcakes and Hawaiian skirts.  The party was clearly cherished by all family and friends invited as they laughed, ate well and played bridal shower games for over two hours.

However, there was one family member near and dear to their hearts that was not present. Grandmother, Sue Tolley, who was diagnosed at age 50 with cancer, went into remission after treatment, but died 7 years ago when the cancer came back.  In addition to honoring her this day they also chose to use this celebration to raise money for cancer research.  Sarah chose artist, Stacey Valle of St. Louis to create a unique bracelet to raise funds for the cause.

The bracelets include four wooden discs with stamped lettering then hand-painted and sprayed with several coats of gloss acrylic varnish. Discs are linked with jump rings and chain with toggle clasp. One side of bracelet says CURE and other side says HOPE. Length of bracelet is 8″. Chain links could be removed or added to adjust length. They come in many color combinations of light and dark pink, white and brown.

There are 20 bracelets still available for sale, anyone interested in purchasing a bracelet can contact Sarah directly at sarah11883@sbcglobal.net.  The price point is $10 but you can give as much or as little as you would like.  100% of the proceeds from the sale of the bracelets will be donated to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Sarah will be sending a check to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in September, which is the month of her grandma’s birthday.

Having friends and family members who have survived and lost their lives to cancer Artistic Soup Photography was touched by Sarah’s energy and effort in her cause.  We are happy to assist in Sarah’s fundraising efforts.