Wedding Photography, Bridal Hair, Bridal Make-up, Personal Training » weddings

Our work published in Wedding Ideas Magazine

Admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:29:39 +0000

NEWS: Some of Ian’s work and advice were featured in a recent issue of Wedding Ideas Magazine (2010) – thanks too to Matt & Louise for being the perfect Bride and Groom

Wedding Ideas Magazine, May 2010 - image and tip by Ian McGraw LBIPP

Man Meat Fire

Admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:54:34 +0000

With weddings being such a female orientated subject it’s great to see plenty of man-stuff appearing on the various blogs (ref: Staggered) and also in the popular wedding and male grooming magazines. We recently spotted this ‘Mantastic idea’ from Jane and Hugh Gordon at MAN MEAT FIRE.

MAN MEAT FIRE is a gastro-barbecue company who offer to cater for weddings, pre-wedding gathering, post-wedding soires, and parties in general. The range of barbecue cooking offered is immense, ranging from Antipodean, Oriental, Asian, South African, though to North and South American, and get this, Breakfast!

If you have a stag-do to organise then why not also consider their ‘Barbecue Cook Schools’ which are great man-bonding events, catering for the barbecue challenged! Hugh will take participants through initial safety talk, knife handling demonstration, food safety and hygiene, before moving onto the real Meat of the session. You will leave with your head buzzing with knowledge, stomach full of food, and cool boxes containing your man-ageable creations.

Take a look at the MAN MEAT FIRE site at www.manmeatfire.com

If you need any more info, call on 08450 34 20 34 and mention Veil & Train.

Next Barbecue Cook School is 1st May 2010.

Related Blogs

Adorable Mini Paper Lanterns

Admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:15:44 +0000

Simply adorable, white minature paper lanterns are perfect to string along patio table umbrellas, railings, entryways and arbors. Maybe try threading lots of them on to a string of fairy lights.

The white mini paper lanterns are availaible in packs of 6. Each lantern measures approx: W13cm x H11cm with a 12cm long tassel hanging underneath.

On sale now at Confetti for £2.99

Our Top Eco Wedding Tips

Admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:50:34 +0000

It is always helpful to know what other Brides and Grooms are doing to make their wedding day an extra specially Green one. Veil and Train have been listening to and reading many stories, not only from the weddings we work on, but also from around the world to bring you a list of our top Eco tips.

In this our latest article we look at some ideas to make your wedding a truly Eco friendly affair. Now you can enjoy the most special moment of your life knowing the extravagance is entirely guilt free. So have a read through and hopefully you can make your promises to each other and also to the planet:

Keep the wedding in one place as opposed to moving about to reduce transport emissions
Reduce air miles by using local traders to source items such as dresses, food, drink etc
Make your own wedding favours and accessories – check the The Make Lounge for their forthcoming ‘DIY Bride’ workshops
Use organic caterers who promise entirely biodegradable equipment
Use only food that is currently in season and source it locally
Source beer and cider from local organic breweries
UK vineyards produce some excellent sparkling wines consider these instead of Champagne
Horse drawn transport instead of a wedding car can be a fun and green way to arrive and depart
Have a seasonal theme – e.g. Autumn weddings, collect berries and leaves from the surrounding countryside for décor
Reduce carbon footprint further by emailing invitations rather than posting them
Rather than receiving a traditional present ask guests to contribute to an eco charity, or get them to bring along sapling trees to plant
Use local entertainers for the evening do
Ensure empty Champagne, wine and drinks bottles are suitably recycled
Fairtrade is the name of the game – source roses, wine and wedding rings with ethics in mind
Another way to get eco-friendly flowers is to use locally grown flowers
Continue the theme by taking your honeymoon closer to home
Instead of buying copies of bridal magazines see how many people can lend you their copies or use the internet to do research
Consider wedding rings made of welsh gold or find a retailer who supports the No Dirty Gold Campaign

Useful Links:

Contemporary craft workshops with a stylish social twist – www.themakelounge.com
Exceptional Produce from the Orkney Isles – www.orkneysbest.co.uk
Ethical Wedding Blog & list of suppliers – www.ethicalweddings.com
Eco Chic Wedding directory – www.greenunion.co.uk
Ethical Gold Retailers and Suppliers – www.nodirtygold.org
The Eco Chic Wedding & Home Show – www.ecochicweddingandhomeshow.com

The Arabian Tent Company

Admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:01:55 +0000

In this article we thought we would visit the people behind The Arabian Tent Company, a business dedicated to creating beautiful and sumptuous environments for your event.

2009 has seen a Vintage trend emerging and the Arabian Tent Companies ‘Cornish Cream’ interior has proved exceptionally popular for this theme, styled with pastel bunting, vintage teacups, cupcakes and wild flowers.

Their Bombay Boudoir style tent has also maintained it’s immense popularity as the fashion for Bollywood continues.

The Arabian Tent Company is far from a ‘normal marquee company’. They will help supply all the usual items such as hard flooring & dance floors, dining chairs & heaters. But it’s the little details that you wouldn’t expect like stunning sofa chill out/ lounges and table decorations, and with 8 different interiors to choose from from cream block prints to purple velvet, The Arabian Tent Company will be able to take the stress out of wedding arrangements, allowing you to sit back and be as amazed.

The Arabian Tent Company

The Studio, The Old Farmhouse, Norton, Bishopstone, East Sussex BN25 2UW
Tel: 07941 370241 or 01323 887654
Email: katherine@arabiantents.com
Web: www.arabiantents.com

Winter Weddings

Admin — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:30:17 +0000

I would like to just put in a good word for Winter Weddings. From a photographic viewpoint you have a lot of really interesting light at this time of year. Earlier in the season there were also reminants of the lovely autumnal colours to add further dimension to wedding images.

Winter light has a very special quality that can really ooze quality in portraiture. We’re talking soft filtered light that falls off a subject’s face with a very satisfying tonal gradation. The longer shutter speeds needed in this type of work also help bring out hidden colour in light that otherwise wouldn’t be seen under harsh flash or studio light.

I also love seeing Christmas Trees in wedding photographs too there is something very complimentary about a wedding dress and a Christmas Tree, probably a synergy of shape and light between the two.

SEO Tips for Photographers

Admin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:11:49 +0000

Here at Veil & Train we have found that many photographers are unaware that simply publishing pictures to a portfolio website does not form a strong enough online business strategy. Attention has to be paid to an effective internet marketing (IM) plan – without it you’ll go virtually unnoticed.

Here I’ll give you some top tips on increasing your chances of getting noticed through the e-clamor by the right people online – art directors, ad agencies, art buyers – the ultimate goal in building a successful online presence for your photography business.

First in this series is a quick ‘how to’ on Search Engine Marketing – subscribe to the Veil & Train feed so you don’t miss the upcoming Social Media Marketing and Blog Marketing articles.
SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

SEM is the promotion of your website by increasing is visibility (pagerank) on popular search engines. This is achieved through the use of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies. These SEO strategies include:

Use of meta tag ‘keyword’ – choose good keywords to describe your site and more specifically your specialities. The keyword ‘photography’ is far too broad = 376,000,000 references on Google! Try thinking about your strengths, be more niche e.g ‘abstract photography’ = a mere 171,000 references, ‘abstract tree photography’ = 7. Try the free tools at SEOBook or KeyWordDiscovery for more keyword help.
Avoid ’splash pages’ or ‘click to enter’ as the top level page on your site, also avoid website designs based round HTML frames. Splash pages are a main entry page with either a large graphic image and a link instructing visitors to “enter” a Web site; or a Flash animation with a link to skip the animation, and a redirect to a new Web page after the animation is completed. You really want your top level page to act as a table of contents for the rest of the site. Splash pages lack keyword rich text and anchor text apart from maybe ’skip intro’. Most search engines ignore redirects, splash pages are generally based on redirects.
Do not publish a website that says it is ‘under construction’, you might find it gets indexed in this state and it will not get re-indexed when the real content appears
Most photographers have little or no copy whatsoever on their pages. Write and design your site using the words your target audience types into search queries – keep your portfolio and gallery sections away from the top level pages, as good as search engines are they can not tell what type of photographer you are from your images.
Avoid Flash for the same reasons mentioned above, although you may have typed loads about yourself in your 100% flash based site, the search engines won’t be able to see a single word of it. It’s a movie, search engines can’t retrieve words from movies either.
Keep a check on your linked referrers – a link from another page to your own website should contain keywords in with the anchor text of the link. Google weights its Search Engine Results pages towards the anchor text of links to a page.
Tag your gallery/portfolio images with keywords – this will help search engines that have image search features pick up your images – after all your images are your product, make sure they get indexed too.
Submit your URL to the search engines – you can either do this manually, use a free submitter service such as Submit Express or use a paid service like the one provided by NamesCo (clicking this link supports photosavings)
Improve your page rank through link exchange with other bloggers and websites in your specialist area of photography. Google favours anchor text when indexing websites, so the more websites your URL appears on the better your Google PageRank.

Where do I go for more information? The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is a non profit industry organization for search engine marketing. SEMPO’s mission is primarily one of education – to demystify the various aspects of search marketing, to drive awareness of its incredible efficiency and marketing potential, and to help members and nonmembers to grow as professionals.

Finally give the SEO Page Tester Tool below a try, enter your URL and the keyword to test and see how your website performs. One of my favourites is “London Wedding Photographer”.

Is your web page optimized? Test it now:

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