With the wedding creeping up on us week by week, it was well and truly time to organise the suits for the groom and groomsmen.

It was suggested that we first port of call be Tony Barlow, as he apparently has a good range of formal wear for weddings, formals, balls and so forth. The suggestion was spot on, we didn’t need to go anywhere else for it – they had everything we needed. Our attendant, Sonya (from memory) was also fantastic, she knew what we should and shouldn’t be wearing, what looks good and what is considered a fashion faux pas. The whole experience was very simple and straight forward, no doubt helped along by a great attendant.

Strike one more from the list, September 24 here we come!

Last night Claire and I cruised to Brisbane to see Jason from Studio 60 about photography for our wedding again. We’ve now confirmed and paid our deposit to have him photograph our wedding; it is now set in stone.

When we got around to confirming what album we wanted (Studio 60 offers a bunch of different styles and types of albums), Jason pointed out that his pricing scheme was about to change. Initially, I thought that was going to be a bad thing. However, he then pointed out that he is simplifying it again (I thought it was simple before, see below) – which for us made it cheaper than what we were going to pay, half the cost in fact! I nearly couldn’t believe it.

Previously, you picked the physical size of the album you wanted. You then picked the binding of your album (types of leather, fabric, wood and so forth) and from here you picked which base package you wanted. There were different bases, which included a different number of sides in the album. If you wanted additional sides, on top of the base, you’d have to pay a fixed amount per additional side.

The concept of sides is that you aren’t paying per photo, so it doesn’t matter if you want 10 photos on a side or 1, the side has a fixed cost. I think this method of costing a photo album was excellent; it makes costing an album a whole lot easier.

With the new pricing structure, Studio 60 have now removed the ‘confusion’ of picking different albums. They now have a fixed price for all albums. This means you could have a bigger squarer shaped album or a more rectangular book like album, which ever you prefer – they all cost the same. These all include a predefined number of sides. Now, you just have to pick what binding you want your album in and away you go – couldn’t be simpler.

I’m really excited to see how it turns out in the end, as all of the albums we’ve seen of Jason’s have been stellar. Its also really nice to know that we don’t have to worry about it anymore too. I’ve talked to a few people about wedding albums now and some have had good experiences and some have not; knowing that we don’t have to worry about walking the bad path is very comforting in my opinion.

Scratch one more off the list, time to move onto the next.

As I had previously stated, Claire and I have been looking for a photographer. After some discussion, we decided to go with the fabulous Brisbane photographer Jason Starr. When we met with Jason at the Studio 60 office, Jason was nothing but fantastic. He showed us through a variety of different wedding folios, portrait folios and general shots/prints. Claire and I were nothing short of totally impressed and absolutely can’t wait to see how it all turns out post 24^th September 2005!

On Friday night, Claire and I travelled down to Brisbane again as we had an appointment with the wedding co-ordinator at Stamford Plaza. The meeting was pretty straight forward, we really just needed to confirm the area we wanted to actually get married in.

In the end, we decided the foyer of the Grand Ballroom would be fantastic. However, there is a small problem with that; it isn’t part of the package we had organised. So, we have booked one of the other rooms, as a safe guard. This is where it gets groovy, Alison (our funky co-ordinator) said she is happy to swap the rooms over closer to the date if the Grand Ballroom isn’t being used. She also said that it very rarely gets used on the day we’ll be getting married, so it is quite likely it will be available.

It doesn’t matter if we can’t, the booked room is awesome too; but the bling bling factor of the foyer/ballroom is definitely up there.
;)