Choosing the right professionals for your wedding is a personal decision and tends to lean on far more than just their portfolios alone. On a wedding day you spend so much time with your vendors, so having a connection with them makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable. We want you to have a chance to get to know your vendors a little better before you make that tough decision on who to choose. We reached out to our wedding professionals on your behalf so you can become better acquainted with them.

Meet Frances Beatty, A Georgian Bay Photographer.

Frances is a portrait and wedding photographer who wears her heart on her sleeve. She believes in breathing in the moment and spending as much time outdoors as humanly possible, preferably without a device in sight. Frances was formally trained in photography at OCADU and seamlessly blends documentary photography with creative portraiture in her work today. Frances has been a full-time photographer for 5 years but has been photographing people since she was in high school, we won’t tell you how long ago that was, but we will tell you it involved a darkroom. She creates evocative images of her clients and believes that photographs should be a window into the past. Her work is soulful and embodied. While she likes to blend into the crowd so she can capture your day naturally as it unfolds, Frances believes that the best way to do that is to engage with you and your guests as a friend. Frances will make you forget you’re having your photo taken, and remind you to breathe on your wedding day. Only one way to find out…

You can find Frances online here: www.francesbeatty.com
Make friends with her on social media: @francesbeattyphoto

What's your favourite way to spark creativity and how do you stay inspired?

Cinema and music are two of the best ways to spark creativity for me. I love throwing on a new or favourite record and just getting into a flow state with it. I also find that music tends to relax clients, so I encourage them to have a playlist to listen to on the way to their shoot or even once they arrive.

Right now with such limited time to watch movies, music is on all the time in the house and there's a lot of dancing happening. I'm also spending a lot of time in nature. Nature is basically a cure-all and I always find inspiration there.

Tell us about your process. What can your clients expect when they inquire with you?

I prefer to have a relationship with anyone I work with, that way they feel comfortable with me by the time we shoot. It's so important in order for my clients to trust me and let their guard down. That's part of how I'm able to get such natural-looking images. Before booking, couples can expect to sit down and have a chat over video, we'll chit chat about their wedding, but mostly it's about them. Who they are. How they fell in love. Etc.

I think it's so important to find the right fit for their wedding, as their photographer gets to see them during the most intimate parts of their day. If that's not me, that's ok!

How early in advance should clients reach out to you?

Normally I book 1 year in advance. With covid, 2022 is going to be a triple cohort year so it's filling up much faster than usual. Still, I only take bookings 1.5 years in advance at the most.

What question(s) do you wish more clients would ask you when inquiring about your services?

I would LOVE it if people asked their photographers, and me, about business insurance and back-ups. It's not the sexy stuff, but you really should know how your photographer plans to take care of your images afterward. Do they have more than one copy before you receive them? Do they have a contingency plan if they're sick or if their gear dies mid-shoot?

What question(s) do you wish clients would stop asking you?

“What lenses do I use?” A lot of blogs have these LOOOOOOOOOONG lists of questions to ask your photographer and most of those questions are kinda dumb. If you are into cameras and photography, let's talk gear, but if when I tell you what I have I'm basically speaking a foreign language, don't bother asking it. Ask instead: Do you have backup gear in case something happens to your lens/camera/flash etc?

What's the one piece of advice you give all your couples?

Carve out a day or evening the week of your wedding to have a date. NO wedding talk. Just the two of you doing something you love to do and remember why you're getting married.

What is your favourite wedding tradition?

I have to admit, I'm not huge on wedding traditions. A lot of them have very bizarre backstories, or just feel totally irrelevant to me now. I do love rituals though, and I love it when people include rituals that are personal for them. I'm not sure if you'd call it a tradition or not, but I love when couples write each other a little note for the wedding day. It's not easy for everyone to share their heart in front of a crowd, but they want to with their partner. This is a great way to do that, and a beautiful keepsake.

What are your favourite moments to photograph at a wedding?

The ones with full, open hearts and unabashed emotion. Give that to me all day, every day.

Describe your dream day off.

My husband, my son, and me out in nature. No cell phones. No cars.

We'd wake in a tent to the sound of birds and the sun rising. We'd lounge around and probably drift back to sleep a few times. One of us would read aloud, probably not Calvin. The freeloader doesn't read yet. (He's only 3 months). The day would be slow and mindful. We'd cook over an open fire, paddle in our canoe, catch a trout or two, go foraging for something delicious to eat in the woods, maybe go for a swim and dry off in the sun. A family nap would definitely be in order. We'd stay up until well after the sunset and watch the stars, drinking rum and tea and falling deep into conversation.

If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would you go?

I would pack up my husband and my son into a van and just hit the road. We'd head east and end up in the Maritimes. I miss the Atlantic ocean something fierce. Chances are we'd end up in Nova Scotia, as that feels like our second home and always has, but I think we might head to Newfoundland first. I've never been, and that to me is just bananas.

Tell us a fun fact about you.

I am a massive dill pickle fan. So much so that when Good Grief created their dill pickle donut as an April Fool's joke, I asked them to put it on their menu.