All In One Wedding Photography and Planning A Farm At South Mountain Wedding

November 20, 2021

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Hi there! Welcome to the Fully Alive Photography blog, a journal about our clients, shoots, and my own personal life. Stay a while and say hello!

Hello, I'm Tracy

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All In One Wedding Photography and Planning A Farm At South Mountain Wedding

It’s official!!!!! Fully Alive Photography is GROWING!!! Enter stage right….â€œ Fully Alive Photography & EVENTSâ€!!!!

For the past decade plus, I have been handling many things for my clients that donâ€™t have wedding planners or even if they doâ€¦. Like coordinating and timeline planning, lighting recommendations, portrait lists, location, venue & vendor recommendations and more- I am very involved with my couples. LIKE REALLY involved. Usually we become very good friends through the process.

Your wedding is SUCH a big deal. Like one of the top life events you will ever have. So I care a LOT and take my job very seriously. I’ve never been the shoot and burn photographer. I’ve never just “shown up” and shot. I’ve always been involved.

So it was time to take the next step! So now I have partnered up with my use-to-be assistant Nicole that was just above and beyond talented and experienced as a wedding planner with over a decade under her belt doing just that!

So now WE will be officially offering actual 3 month & day of planning services like vendor coordination, check lists for to-do preparation, final walk-through meetings, rehearsals, and a few other goodies.

Back story….Do you remember the amazing Nicole that has been working with me over the past few years helping me on wedding days? You all fell in love with her because her personality is the perfect blend of business, calm & fun! Seriously she’s amazing! She balances me out and handles my high energy like the hero she is!

Yeah â€¦well sheâ€™s also an incredibly talented planner and wedding coordinator and has been for yearsâ€¦ Nicole was the wedding coordinator at the Desert Botanical Garden when we met 6 years ago- and before that she worked for a wedding planner. We became friends and then right before Covid she moved over to lead plan & coordinate at Tempe Mission Palms… Then COVID hit! So events went down. So I was like… I still have some weddings & plenty of clients outside of the wedding world… so I was buried in work and so thankfully Nicole came to work for me part time between jobs. She was such a help to me and we ended up becoming even better friends… and then planning & plotting Fully Alive’s growth.

Nicole is incredibly talented as a coordinator, and we both have hundreds of weddings under our belts,I have over a decade of small business experience, and HECK with it….was already doing so much of the aesthetics & know-how, and other various planning tasks for my couples so WHY NOT grow????? And why not let a pro come onboard and expand those offerings????

So Nicole is stepping up her position with my company and will be contracting with me as my LEAD PLANNER & coordinator for 3 month and day-of wedding packages on select weddings.

I couldn’t be more thrilled. And don’t worry… if you didn’t or don’t book our planning services many of you will still get the Nicole & Tracy team as she will continue to assist and execute my timelines for my photography clients whenever she can! I’m spoiled and it’s hard to do a wedding alone these days. I’m too old. haha. 40 isn’t old but let me tell you, weddings are much harder now than when I was in my 20’s. haha.

We are SO thankful to Katie & Evan Yatable for letting us be their wedding photography & planning team for their wedding at The Farm At South Mountain this November!

Of course there are growing pains and learning curves… Do you want to hear a few? hahaha.

We had a team of 4 scheduled (Nicole & Me, my assistant and her assistant)- but the farm had the tables set up wrong from our plan – so they scrabbled to move them without scheduled time slots and they were HEAVY! That put us back time wise a bit and lots of sweat. haha. But honestly, that was the biggest hiccup- next time we will have a team of 5 to account for unknowns. It’s better to have more than less!
Some other vendors had some troubles and so we handled those things with ease with the help of the farm.

But honestly… that was really it!!! I feel like we did such an incredible job! I am sure we will learn as we go more and more. The main hiccups involved vendor management and so we will work in time & a plan to deal with those things next time.

Life and risks are just a learn as you go situation. No point stressing, just fail and grow!!!!

Thank you so much to all my clients for supporting this new venture of mine! I think I have problems… I officially now own 3 companies. hahaha. I’m juggling the photography, branding agency/ small business consulting & websites, AND now wedding planning! haha. Thankfully I have Nicole to partner with on the planning and my responsibilities will only go up about 10-15 hours a wedding- and we won’t be taking too many this first year.

A few things to know about the planning services for now….

We will only take a select few weddings per year ( 3-4 tops)
This service will only be available with my photography clients. So you must have booked Fully Alive Photography to add on our event planning services.
2 Packages will be available for booking starting Jan 2022 (Day Of/Week of + 3 Month & Day Of) They will include different services but both be just very helpful add ons to have my team at your wedding running the show!

They are meant to relieve your stress, create organization, a plan and then effectively pull off the plan! Just call us your DREAM TEAM. Maybe I should rename the company ” Fully Alive Dream Team” lol.

At this time we will not be offering full wedding planning services. I have several incredible women-owned wedding planners in my network that I will continue to refer for these services. We just do not have the capacity to operate a year of planning. Planners do a lot friends! like a LOT!!!!

So say hello to your dream team & more wedding experiences and lots of FUNNNN heading your way!

Now let’s get to the GOOD bit!

Welcome and congratulate our amazing couple Katie & Evan Yatabe. I like to call them YAYtable… it’s now their hashtag too. haha.

You will most likely know Katie by now (she was my sons 2nd grade teacher through all of covid quarantine AND now also his 3rd grade teacher.

I am kind of obsessed with her. She is such an incredible human. You can read more about her on Katie & Evan’s engagement shoot HERE. Then of course Evan is just seriously the best! Some grooms are so hard to work with because they really hate wedding plans and photos. haha. I feel like their nemesis. LOL>

But not for Evan I feel so loved by him and his kindness and his great LOVE for Katie. I cannot get over how happy he was to be there, up for any and all photos, and just all his joy and smiles.

Katie so kindly wrote us a review from their side of this venture – it’s our first review as a team planning & coordinating a wedding!!!!!:

“Fully Alive Photography really knows how to bring out the smiles, laughs and fun with her larger-than-life- personality!Â
From the moment we met, I knew she was going to make all our wedding experiences from our engagement shoot and leading up to the wedding day well worth it!Â
The photos Tracy captures of you and the one you love are MAGICAL.
Not only is Tracy everything you want and need for your wedding experience but so is Nicole with Fully Alive Events!Â
Nicole will help make your planning so much easier! She listens to what you want/need, gives you the right advice, and offers her help whenever!
I couldnâ€™t imagine not having Tracy and Nicole throughout our wedding experience! They helped make the entire planning process and the wedding day easy, organized, and the best day ever!”
Katie Yatable – The Bride

Nicole & I love you guys so much! Thank you for taking a risk on us and booking our team to photograph & coordinate this dream wedding!

xoxo-Tracy Ann