The end of every year brings holidays, new year’s celebration, bowl games, and of course, our year in review blog! A few years back we started doing a year end blog to review all of the fun and it’s become something that has really stuck throughout the years! 2021 was a welcome breath of fresh from 2020. Weddings were back to normal, and our schedules have never been busier! 2021 saw a bunch of couples that had to reschedule from 2020, couples that simply put their wedding plans off by 1 year, and the normal amount of couples who intended to get married in 2021. It was a year that saw us and our amazing team the busiest we’ve ever been. We usually peak in the spring and fall but this year was non stop from beginning to end with no slow down in the action. It was definitely a wild ride and one we hope you’ll enjoy following along on below! We’ve included our 2021 by the numbers as well as one image from every wedding and elopement below!
2021 By the numbers
106 Weddings & Elopements - (78 JCM; 28 BALSAM MOUNTAIN)
1 wedding every 3.4 days
57 Different venues
8 Private property/air bnb weddings/scenic locations
67% of our weddings were outside of Asheville
25% of our weddings were outside of WNC
6 States - (NC, SC, VA, FL, WY and CA)
481,500 - Approximate number of wedding photos taken
48% - Of our couples also had an engagement session
*******464 weddings/elopements in 6 years*******
3 things that stood out to us this year:
The increase in the number of engagement sessions. Increased from 31% the year before to 48% this past year. Even way before 2020, we generally only saw numbers in the high 30s.
With all of the couples that had to reschedule from 2020 on top of normal yearly bookings, we had our busiest year ever! Prior to 2021, our busiest year was 2019 with 93 weddings. Given the number of weddings we usually have booked by the end of the year vs this coming year, 2022 is poised to be one of the, if not he busiest wedding seasons as well!
Weddings are back to normal. I can’t speak for every wedding that our teammates shot as we weren’t personally there, but with the 79 that were were a part of weddings were back to normal! Normal sized weddings, no masks, people dancing, mingling, no weird rules, etc.
Loving what we do, and being big people pleasers, we didn’t hesitate one bit when it came to taking on everything we had to this year to accommodate all of our couples, especially those who had to reschedule to to everything that happened last year. Where it became a challenge for us was processing all of the images afterwards. One of the things our couples have raved about the past few years was our impossibly fast turnaround time for their sneak peeks and full galleries. With the amount of the weddings this year, it admittedly became a struggle and for a lot of our couples we did have to push the sneak peeks off a bit in order to make sure we had all of our their galleries completed on time. We did make some adjustments towards the end of the year that should hopefully prevent that from happening again, but I guess what I’m trying to say is. Thank you all for your patience as we worked non-stop this year to get you your images. If we could’ve slept less, we totally would have and trust me when I say, we definitely tried lol. To sum it all up though, 2021 was a year of celebration and abundance for us. One that will undoubtedly re-shape the way we do things for the better, and one that has revved us up for the future. We’ve never pushed ourselves so hard and knowing what we are physically and mentally capable of now has us excited to accomplish more, and serve more couples. We thank you all again for your continued love and support, we thank our friends and family for putting up with us not being there as much as we wish we could, all of our vendor friends who make this journey even more fun, and we also thank our talented team for continuing to help us serve the amazing couples we do, and inspiring us with their creativity on a regular basis. Cheers to that run on sentence and here’s to another amazing year in the books!
