My Friends Photos

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Brides and Grooms planning a wedding in Australia this year might be excused for being a little confused on the financial side of things. Early in the year we were told to expect interest rate rises to dampen inflation, which would have worried those planning to borrow to cover their wedding expenses. But as the year has unfolded and the global financial crisis has hit, interest rates appear to be beginning a downward trend. While theoretically this makes the decision to borrow more palatable, growing fears of a recession and job losses provide added reasons to exercise caution when deciding to borrow. As if planning a wedding wasn’t stressful enough!

Despite the stories of financial doom and gloom that dominate the nightly news, there are a few golden rules about planning weddings that remain true, regardless of what’s going on around us. And if you stick to these rules, no matter what’s happening at the national or international level, you should be able to avoid your own wedding-related financial crisis.

First of all, decide on a budget and stick to it. It’s easy to go over the top with weddings, in light of the fairytale images and emotional investments that surround them. But beautiful and meaningful weddings don’t have to cost the earth. Have a cold hard look at your own finances and what you can realistically afford to spend – especially if you are planning to borrow to fund the big day. The last thing you want to do is to dampen the period of post-wedding bliss with concerns about how to meet new financial obligations.

Once you have decided on a budget and enter the planning phase, give yourself the time and space to shop around to find good deals on the services you’ll be paying for (such as venues, cars and accommodation). Attending a couple of bridal expos is a great way to see what’s on offer and to compare service providers – and to find excellent special deals that could save you lots!

And finally, think about alternative ways of achieving what you want on the day. For example, if an official photographer is beyond your budget, why not consider hiring digital cameras for your guests and a memory card copier to capture all of the photos that your friends take on their personal digital cameras (www.myfriendsphotos.com.au).

It’s easy to get caught up in concerns about the state of the economy and how it might impact on our own personal plans. But thinking clearly about your own financial situation and making sensible planning and purchasing decisions will ensure that the doom and gloom that currently surrounds us doesn’t impact on the joy of planning your big day.

If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.

1300 307 828

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[If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.]

I’m heading down to Kangaroo Valley this weekend to go to our friends’ wedding. One of the nice things about having this service is that we can give our friends something really different as a present. I’m going to bring the card reader with me, so I can copy all the photos their friends take on their personal cameras.

The couple getting married are relatively new friends for us and while I’ve met some of their friends out and about, it’s not a group I know well. One of the advantages of doing the “photo-getting” is that it’s a great excuse to meet everyone at the wedding. I get to introduce myself and chat away with everyone with a camera!

And of course, at the end of it, I’ll have a copy of all their photos which I’ll put on a disk and give to the bride and groom as a gift. I really enjoy sorting the photos from a wedding – and I especially enjoy it when the couple are friends of mine.

Within a few days I’ll have a selection of about 200 photos up online on a password-protected gallery on our website and it will be packed with friends arm-in-arm, hugging, smiling, laughing, dancing and loving the wedding.

As I write this, Armstrong’s Wonderful World comes fittingly on the radio…
I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do?
They’re really saying, I love you

If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.

1300 307 828

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[If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.]

Just a quick one today to let you know we are attending the Australian Bridal Service wedding expo this weekend in Fox Studios, Sydney. We look forward to meeting you and chatting about the digital camera hire service.

We’ve always found the ABS expos to be great exposure for us and represent good bang for our buck for our marketing dollars.

Wedding expos play a significant role in the way we sell our digital camera hire service as they are the only time we get to interact fully with our customers. It’s really useful to us to hear the questions you ask and to receive honest open feedback on our service.

For example, have we priced the service correctly? We want to make hiring digital cameras for your reception tables an obvious choice, especially when comparing with the disposable cameras. While slightly more expensive than disposables, with the online gallery and DVD of every photo taken at your wedding, we hope it represents good value. It’s a great buzz for us to see people’s reaction when it’s positive.

Obviously not everyone buys our service, so it’s really useful for us when they tell us why it’s not for them. Often the concern is around losing a camera. One of the advantages of the digital camera over the disposable is that people respect them more – and I can tell you that it rarely happens that we don’t get them all back. Every now and again one is damaged – and that’s what the insurance is for – you’re covered and so are we.

If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.

1300 307 828

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[If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.]

Many men love being part of the wedding preparations – and why wouldn’t they? It can be a lot of fun and really satisfying to get the wedding day that you both want.

Sure, tradition, or at least the Hollywood version of tradition, has it that it’s the woman who has been dreaming of the perfect wedding since she was a girl, but is that really the way it works nowadays? As we all know, there’s plenty to organise for weddings and so it makes sense to share the tasks between partners.

Some tasks lend themselves more naturally to feminine skills and some towards the masculine side. While items such as the flowers; the dress; theming; and bonbonniere are of the former, there are plenty of tasks that the groom can sink is teeth into.

Hiring a photographer; choosing the DJ or band and very importantly, getting the right music (after all, you will probably spend as much time dancing as you will having speeches and eating); organising the transport; booking the room you’ll stay in on your first night; and bringing up a list of possible honeymoon destinations – all good “manly” tasks.

There is one more that lends itself well to the groom – and that’s gathering all the photos your friends take on the night. After all many of them will bring digital cameras and with a bit of encouragement they will happily snap away all night. In fact, if you say that you would like to take a copy of the photos they will feel as if they are included in your day!

So, how do you gather all the photos? There are a couple of ways. The worst way is to chase people up after the wedding and ask them to burn them onto a CD. This is time-consuming on your part and theirs and has a low success rate. You can improve the process by placing a CD on each chair but this will still require some chasing round and work on your friends’ part.

The best way is to hire our portable card reader. This is a neat little device that one of your groomsmen can carry around in his pocket all evening. Ask your guests to see your groomsman before they leave to copy all the photos they took onto the card reader – it’s really easy and only takes a minute. This way you get every photo taken at your wedding, on the night of the wedding.

Back this up with one of our digital cameras on each of your tables and you have an excellent package – you’ll get so many photos – quickly and easily. Let us to all the sorting out for you – we’ll give you a DVD of all your photos and we’ll put your favourite ones up online on a password-protected gallery so you can share them with all your friends and family.

Our service is available throughout Australia.

If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.

1300 307 828

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When My Friends Photos reached its first birthday recently, it was time to reflect on how much we had learned about the wedding industry and especially to assess how our digital camera hire service was being received. We were trying to do something new – provide brides and grooms with a new way to capture their wedding day and share the pictures with their friends and family.

So, had they liked it? Had we packaged it well? Was it easy to understand and use? Were we easy to find? Were we good value-for-money? Would they recommend us to their friends?

These were the questions that we wanted positive answers for and we tweaked and improved our service until we did – and our promise is that we will continue to do so.

With so many things to spend your money on, was there a compelling reason to hire our service? My Friends Photos gets you every single photo taken at your wedding – both from our own hire cameras and your guests’ personal cameras. This is a promise that no other company can make – and an excellent reason to hire our service.

Simply put, disposable cameras have had their day. They are tired; poor quality; relatively expensive; environmentally unfriendly; and user unfriendly. The good thing is that everyone knows this, they just don’t know yet that there is an alternative.

Within a few years though, the disposable camera market will have come to a deserved standstill and be replaced entirely with stylish, streamlined digital camera hire services like ours. We believe it to be an inevitable and sensible development in the wedding industry, and we love being at the forefront of it.

If you are interested in finding out more about our digital camera hire service please contact us.

1300 307 828

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Last week we had a stand at the RSVP Event Management expo in Sydney, which was our first official foray into the world of corporate event management.

We had had a number of businesses use our services for a wide number of uses: Christmas parties, Away Days, official dinners, marketing events, and a few esoteric uses such as the NSW government asking 6 aboriginal elders to walk towards an agreed point, taking pictures of what is important to them as they go!

The digital camera hire service is great for allowing the guests or attendees to take photographs of the event of course. We also found that the event management departments and companies were interested in the service because by placing a digital camera on each table, it can be used as an elegant ice breaker at formal gala dinners – and a great way to share the images of the event with everyone who attended. People much prefer to have their picture taken by people who they know than by an “official” photographer.

Companies that organise team-building events were interested in using the cameras for activities like “scavenger hunts” or “photo-orienteering”.

To contact us to discuss how we can be of assistance in providing digital cameras for your corporate event, please email us on info@myfriendsphotos.com.au or call on 1300 307 828.

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Welcome to the My Friends Photos blog where we will be keeping you up-to-date with our special offers, upcoming events, new services and the latest in the wedding industry and corporate event management - especially when it comes to digital camera hire!

My Friends Photos is Australia’s premier Digital Camera Hire company. We specialise in weddings and corporate events - and we provide a service that no-one else does in Australia.

Our vision is that within 4 years buying disposable cameras for wedding reception tables and Christmas parties will be a thing of the past. Hiring digital cameras is the obvious choice for brides and grooms who want lots of good quality photos of their wedding. Currently it’s only slightly more expensive than the disposable cameras, with a significantly improved output.

We welcome your comments and your feedback. Please help us to remain Australia’s premier digital camera hire company.

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