One of the top regrets brides say they have after their wedding day is wishing they had hired a better photographer. Terrible wedding photos will be an enormous disappointment for the rest of your life. And the two greatest causes of lousy wedding photos?

1. choosing the cheapest photographer
2. having a friend photograph your wedding.

At first, choosing a wedding photographer can seem daunting and overwhelming. This article is designed to give you the information you need to confidently choose a wedding photographer who will be perfect for you. The following tips for choosing a wedding photographer are listed in order of importance, with the first being the most important consideration.

You probably won't be surprised when I tell you that most people don't particularly like having their photo taken. It kills me every time I hear someone say, "But I'm not photogenic," and looks at my camera with nervousness or suspicion. The truth is, everyone can be photogenic as it has nothing whatsoever to do with our physical looks or body shape. Few of us grew up with professional photographers as parents, so our experience with being photographed has been cheezy family photos by people who didn't know a thing about photography, using the cheap little cameras set on auto, and usually taken during chaotic, stressful situations. No wonder we never looked good. This article hopes to show you how EASY it is to look like a rock star!

Josie & Rick chose Lydgate Beach Park on Kauai's east shore for their beach wedding elopement ceremony location. However, when I arrived there with my assistant, Grace, we discovered a massive storm six weeks earlier that had dumped 50 inches of rain in 24 hrs had also left the beach covered in logs and storm debris! So instead of the usual wedding ceremony on the beach, we realized we had to find a good alternative spot. Twenty minutes of exploring and we found a perfect little spot tucked in the trees just above the beach.

Are controlling mothers, crazy families, outrageous costs and boring local venues causing wedding day blues? Ditch the stress, save your money and elope to Hawaii for a simple, romantic, budget friendly wedding on a sun kissed white sand beach!

I moved to Hawaii six years ago and spent the first year entirely underwater working on a scuba dive boat as a Divemaster, which is where I first fell in love with photography. Since then I've had a camera with me nearly every day. It didn't take long before I went from photographing turtles and octopus to families and weddings - but I'm still not entirely sure how that happened! Along the way I've accumulated photos of some Hawaiian wildlife (mostly by chance, while I was at a photo shoot or going to or coming from one.)

While going thru my numerous multi-gigabyte backup hard drives lately, and transferring images to them to clear off my nearly full laptop, I became aware of a number of things:

1. Holy smokes, Batman, I have thousands upon thousands of photos!

2. But wow, look at all these cool kids photos buried in here!

3. I really need to share them!

Most people are utterly shocked to realize how many 2-4 gigabyte hard drives I have that are filled with nothing but clients photos. I have taken so many thousands of photos that within just a few years as a working photographer, storage of all those photos starts to become a real management issue. :-) My point to all this is that as in my work with thousands of people of all types, shapes, sizes and colors, one common reoccurring theme I see on nearly a daily basis is a fear or discomfort with being in front of a camera. I've literally lost count of how many times I've heard, "I'm not photogenic."