Photography
TAylor howard
July 26, 2012
The Wedding Post of Arkansas Feature
Featured Vendor: Taylor Howard Photography
Welcome to Wednesday, TWPers!!! Today, we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Howard Photography! You’ve seen their work countless times on our sweet little blog so we thought it was high time you got to know these two cuties a little better. Meet Taylor and Jenn. . .
TWP: Can you tell our readers a little bit about who you are?
THP: Sure! We are Taylor and Jenn Howard, a husband and wife photography team, that travels throughout the state photographing Arkansas weddings. We have been married for 8 years and continue to fall in love more every year! We are blessed with the most adorable four-year-old little girl named Adalyn Grace. She definitely keeps us on our toes! Taylor graduated from Harding University with his bachelor’s degree in Business Management, while I graduated with my degree in Speech-Language Pathology. While we thought we had our lives all figured out, God had a different plan for us.
We realized quickly that working in two totally different directions and only seeing one another after work wasn’t what we wanted out of life! We are best friends and love working together, so over the course of a couple of years we were able to pursue what we love! Taylor had been a talented photographer, but pushed it off as a mere hobby until 2008. He seriously considered pursuing Wildlife Photography, but God placed several friends in our lives who pushed him to photograph their weddings. This is definitely not something we recommend doing, but we are very grateful to our friends for those opportunities! During this time is when we really fell in love with weddings! We’ve been focused on wedding photography ever since and we are amazed that it just keeps getting better! It’s awesome waking up every day doing something that you absolutely love and even better that we get to do it with the person we love! Our job rocks!
TWP: Being a part of the wedding industry you hear so many stories of how couples met, how did y’all meet?
THP: We absolutely LOVE to hear how our couples met! The stories are always great, but our favorite part is watching the couple as they are telling their story! She just beams from ear to ear and he always looks over to her as if she is the most beautiful girl in the whole world! So awesome! As much as we love their stories, our love story is my favorite! We met when we were only 14 years old at Camp Manatawny in Pennsylvania, while playing a game of capture the flag. Taylor kept getting caught on purpose, so he could talk to the guard on the other side, me! He said something clever like “Hi” and the rest is history! After a week of summer afternoons spent under gazebos and evening campfire dates, the summer romance (or whatever you want to call it at 14!) came to an end. While driving home from camp, I told my mom that I was going to marry Taylor one day. She of course laughed! Only problem with that plan was that Taylor’s family would be moving to Arkansas at the end of summer! This is at a time before everyone had a cell phone and when snail mail was still popular (We are only 28!). We wrote many, many letters to one another (which we still have!) and the occasional long distance phone call. Time passed as high school began and we lost touch with one another, but always wondered about the lost love on what seemed to be the other side of the world. Both Taylor and I ended up going to Harding University in the Fall of 2002. We felt like we had always been together, but realized that 4 years had passed and we needed to get to know each other again. After only three months of dating, Taylor told me that he wanted to marry me! He waited to propose though, and we were engaged on a beach in Hawaii in March of 2004. We always get asked, how do you know when you are with the right person? For us, there has always been a powerful magnetic pull to be together. It’s hard to explain but without a doubt we know that God created us for one another as soul mates!
TWP: What has drawn you specifically to wedding photography?
THP: Love. We are not only in the presence of love, but we get to document the story behind it! We have seriously the best brides and grooms, but their friends and families always blow us away! How many people go to work each day and never get past the “Hey how’s it going?”… ‘good’ conversations? This world can be so superficial sometimes, but it is the complete opposite at weddings! We go into the wedding day with a friendship built with the bride and groom, and by the end of the day we become a part of their family too! Just the outpouring of love from family and friends is so refreshing!
TWP: Tell us about your photography style. What makes Taylor Howard Photography unique?
THP: Our style is always in a balance between timeless portraits that will be beautiful 100 years from now, and at the same time pushing the envelope artistically. We have an eye for capturing emotion as it unfolds, but also have the ability to get our couple in a relaxed, natural pose that makes them look their very best! Taylor is very creative and has awesome visions, while I am making sure every little detail is perfect. If you got to know us, it wouldn’t take you too much time to figure out that Taylor is just a tad ADD and I’m slightly OCD! I think that’s why we work so well together!
Arkansas brides are so blessed to have so many talented wedding photographers to choose from! Even though other wedding photogs are technically our “competition”, we have great friendships with many and a profound respect for what they do. There are many good photographers that will deliver beautiful wedding images to brides, but the experience we give our brides is beyond stunning images. Weddings, for most, are a once in a lifetime journey, so from the very first consultation we want our couples to know that we will be by their sides the whole time. We make a point to be available to our brides when they have questions about makeup or need a recommendation for a florist or anything else they can think up! We are always there to help in anyway we can! One of my favorite movies used to be The Wedding Planner, so yes I come to every wedding with an emergency wedding kit (Did you think I was going to say fanny pack?!).
Since all of our couples get a custom engagement session with us prior to the wedding, we have already established a friendship with them, which leaves them feeling so much more relaxed and able to be themselves on their big day! On the wedding day we are a friend, wedding expert, coordinator, dress bustler, comic relief, and professional photographer, and more!
As a photographer, I think it’s important to know when each one is needed. We are pros at diffusing moods and keeping everyone happy and having a good time. Weddings can be stressful and may not always bring out the best in people, but keeping the focus on what truly matters is always our goal. We tell our brides that the only thing that really matters is that at the end of the day you get married!
When you book us for your wedding, you also never have to worry about us missing a single moment of your day, because we are with you from the time you begin getting your hair done until the time you and your prince charming ride off into the sunset! With no time restrictions, you never have to worry about your photographer missing a single moment of your wedding story!
TWP: What advice do you have for brides who are looking for a wedding photographer?
THP: We attend weddings for a living, so we’ve seen it all and have learned a lot over the years. One thing that we know is critical to having a stress free and enjoyable wedding day is the wedding timeline. We have got it down to a science and it has never failed us! Our goal for any pre ceremony portraits is to be done one hour before the ceremony. We do this for so many reasons, but the main one is that we want you to have time to relax, enjoy time with your bridal party and family, and let the day truly sink in. For our wedding, we felt like the day was a whirlwind and that parts of it were just a blur!
The best piece of advice we can give and something that we remind our brides of on their wedding day is this… Every wedding has something that doesn’t go as planned, and you won’t know what it will be until it happens. We’ve been at weddings where the ring bearer’s tux looked like Capri pants and had to have them fixed, the groom forgot the ring, the bride’s dress was missing a crucial hook, or the hair dresser ran behind and the wedding started an hour late. While we hope that everything goes perfectly on your wedding day, we know that chances are something will not be as you had planned. In these situations, stay focused on the fact that you get to marry the man of your dreams today and don’t sweat the details! Every time without fail the bride turns to us and says, “I bet this never happens at any one else’s wedding!” It’s hard not to laugh a little and smile because this could not be farther from the truth! These little mishaps are what makes your wedding day unique and all a part of your wedding story, so laugh and embrace it because at the end of the day you begin your life with the man of your dreams!
WOWZA!!! Are you as in love with these two as we are?? This interview makes us want to book them right away for a shoot AND at the same time, enroll in photography classes so we could maybe have the same wonderful life they have. Pretty presh, right??
As wonderful as all this is, we still wondered what brides are saying about Taylor Howard Photography?
Check this out. Pretty much sums it up! :))
“I could have never imagined better wedding photographers for my journey as a bride. From engagement photos, to bridals, to the wedding day itself, they never disappointed. They became every type of support system that any bride could ever want, and I am forever grateful that we chose them to take our pictures. Their teamwork is something that I believe made their photography so utterly beautiful. They got to know me –the real me- and so my pictures turned out to be everything that I had ever dreamed of.”
Mary Bowden, married on March 2, 2012
Follow, follow, follow:
Website: Taylor Howard Photography
Twitter: @thowardphoto
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/thowardphotog/
Phone: 870-917-8012
That’s it for today, loves. Now go make the best of your day and don’t forget to tell all your friends about TWP!!! LOVE YOU!
XOXO,
Deborah
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The Wedding Post is an awesome resource for brides planning their wedding. Be sure to head on over to their blog or follow them on Facebook!
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