Revealing ourselves to you
Gene recently revealed some of what goes through our minds and hearts when we shoot each wedding…
So now I’ll continue on our ‘mini-series’ of revealing the heart of PhotosByMarbles. 
The very first thing we’d like to say is that Goli has just celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary! Yay!!! That’s why we’ve been quite quiet on our Facebook page and this blog. We’ve been trying to spend quality time together. I say trying because we’ve still been meeting up with couples, our printer, searching for new ideas for our prints and all while fulfilling our roles in our church ministries and day jobs. Yep, we do have a pretty full plate on our hands but we are really thankful to be in the position that we are in now.
That’s because as Gene has said, covering all these weddings has blessed us in so many ways. We’re so thankful & happy to be part of such happy, love-soaked unions, each wedding reminding us of our own vows that we’ve promised to each other. Also, seeing each unique couple have their individualities shine through yet blend so well with each other and what more, being able to capture that for them to savour in years to come. It’s really such a privilege.
Having our day jobs is also, for now, a great advantage. It’s helps us provide album choices of a beautiful quality and other cool choices in our packages for our couples to enjoy without pushing up costs for our couples. But I do have to say this, that we really appreciate all our friends who are in this full time and hope all who read this also do because we know the costs involved (financially, emotionally & physically) and how many couples still want ‘value for money’, some times forgetting or pushing aside the fact that for their photographers and videographers, it’s their livelihood.
Having our day jobs is also sometimes a bane because to have a balance, we’ve been taking in only a limited number of weddings and bridals even though some times we really want to be there for those couples that have really shown appreciation for our work.
Well, this brings me to Q&A time!
We’ve recently had quite a few questions from our couples and I thought that it’d be nice to add some here as part of revealing ourselves to you.
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How long have we been doing this?
As Gene said, it’s been 3 years. The 1st wedding he shot was actually in 2006. We decided to put PhotosByMarbles’ start date as October 2006, after that wedding cos that when Goli officially got together. 
So this year will actually be our 4th year!!! Time flies!
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Why are your prices like that?
This one’s difficult to answer. Many in the industry have said we’re too cheap (you know who you are!) and many referred from couples whom we’ve shot from 2-3 years ago say we’re so expensive now. So I guess it depends which group you belong to.
It’s obvious that we don’t charge $800 a day anymore. We also definately don’t think we’re up to par to charge $5k a day. What we can say is that throughout all these years, we have been continually trying to improve ourselves and our packages. What may seem like the same package from 4 years ago is actually very different. Same number of hours? Yes. But have you seen our progression of albums? Recently, we upgraded our basic album provided in our package to a much better quality one, and we err… didn’t raise the price. In fact, we started out doing 4R prints and made the change to our current albums to better tell the story of what happened (as Gene like to tell our couples). 
Gene’s skills have also grown a lot and I’m sure many of our friends who have been following us from years ago can attest to this (take it from me, he’d say I’m his greatest critic). Thus (like I some how always end up saying to Gene) ‘Bang for your buck!’. LOL (don’t ask, I also have no idea why I’d say that.)
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What special offers do you have?
Now, I was puzzled by this for some time. We thought by keeping our prices affordable, that that would be a special offer already. (Also because for our own wedding, we just agreed with the price our PG gave that was within our budget and didn’t try to bargain. Or at least I don’t remember bargaining) BUT! We’ve recently been educated about this! We think it’s the ‘what do you give us free’ and ‘can you give me best price/discount’ that’s being asked of us.
Errr… We don’t really have much to give free. Free pen? Err, 1 free 4R print? But that’s so not us in the sense that we feel it really doesn’t add value to your wedding experience. We can give you a free extra DVD cover but we know that that wouldn’t give you a warm lovey dovey feeling inside. So all we have to give is in our packages and sometimes some extras that our couples find out about when they give us the honour of working with them. Ha ha! Secret! No lah, you just really have to meet us to find out!
Which now brings me to the end of this really long episode of this series. (Gene says he’s not a writer so he leaves all this long writing to me and that’s why his post is still at Part 1. Bah…)
Gene and I are really not the cheesy kind, so do forgive us if we don’t say stuff like ‘we’ll slash our prices in half just for you’ etc etc. (Sorry, too much aussie commercials in me). But we do believe in providing the very best for all our couples. You’ve chosen to entrust your Big Day into our hands and CF cards. So, being the OCD person I am and with Gene’s earnestness, we always stretch ourselves to make sure we’ve done our best for you.
That’s all for now! Till our next entry!
Oli
