Before your wedding day we meet with you at the Serendipity Photography studio in Melbourne to look at folio samples and discuss various aspects of your wedding. This meeting helps us to develop a comprehensive understanding of your needs, especially relating to the style of your wedding and how best to shoot it.

On the day we will generally shoot a variety of styles, depending on your personal preferences. Often these are a balance between a more animated and candid style of photography and a more directed graphic style. From this vast collection we will create a comprehensive album that you feel best reflects your wedding day.

The art of wedding photography has many dimensions. It is often a balancing act—the photographer must ask on the day: is the bride better when she moves or is posed? What is her best feature? When does she look her best? What is the best light to complement her face? What makes her smile? (Usually the groom, of course.)

By thoroughly understanding your needs we can move through your wedding day with you to capture every unique moment. After 20 years of shooting our experience allows us to be flexible and to really go for the style you had in mind. Check out our blog to see our newest work, or follow us on Facebook to find out more!

Serendipity have shot over 2000 weddings in 20 years giving us a wealth of experience to bring to your wedding. We are familiar with ceremonial styles of many cultures, traditions and have catered to a vast variety of unique requests, allowing us to work with you personally to create your ideal album.

We also have a wide experience with multicultural weddings. We have shot hundreds of Asian weddings, amongst them many Vietnamese and Indian weddings. As well as ample Orthodox-style weddings, such as Greek and Serbian. Because of our personal approach we are capable of understanding the complexities of every wedding, and give you the best photographs possible.

To make sure that we get the best of every part of your wedding we usually take between 2000 and 3000 photos on the day. We find that brides and grooms see details in photographs that have significance to them. Being able to choose from a wide variety of shots helps to create an unique album filled with wonderful photos.

We also shoot in the superior RAW format.

While most wedding photographers shoot the simple JPEG format with its limited latitude—we shoot RAW. This allows us to shoot more freely and in situations that would be otherwise impossible for good results. This results in a happier more flowing wedding day, with minimal technical adjusting and maximum attention where it belongs—on the couple!

RAW allows for better post production allowing us to have fine degrees of control over the details of the final image. If you are interested, check out this website for a quick introduction to RAW.

More and more couples are considering options outside of the Melbourne metropolitan area, such as wineries and farms. In our experience weddings held in such locations do not tend to require any further travel, so we choose not to charge any extra for locations less than 100kms from the the CBD, such as Sorrento on the Peninsula or Geelong.

We love exciting travel and we're more than happy to try and help you organise great travel wedding photography deals. With the Australian dollar very high, destination weddings are now an exciting option and we are often able to put together wedding packages at special rates for especially beautiful wedding locations. This not only allows us the flexibility to meet the needs of our clients, but gives us more opportunities to build and improve on our photography. We have often done "Resort-style" packages, where we fly in on the morning and shoot until the next day, leaving in the evening having covered all the events in between, and we offer around 40-sides of photography.

At Serendipity we're enthusiastic about supplying our photography to you in a way that will fulfill your needs in the years and decades to come. Packages at the moment generally come with 1000 JPEG files with copyright for you to print elsewhere or use however you see fit. We can also provide you with extra copies of large photographs at good prices.

At your request we can create an online photo-gallery featuring any photos from your wedding that you wish.

Our standard albums are 30cm × 45cm (12"×18") edge to edge borderless albums. The prints are mounted on to the album after it has been designed and retouched in our studio. The production of Serendipity's photography albums are strongly inspired by fine art, which are hand finished to suit our client's specific tastes or individual needs.

In our experience these albums last very well. In fact, we have albums mounted in this way that are now 15 years old, and are still great.

The photographic paper wears less that the cardboard sections of the albums. We find that there is no special treatment that is needed for the photo mounted pages. The opposite is true of the matted album where the card tends to soil easily and gloves are best worn. The edge to edge album however is easily cleaned with a cloth dampened with turpentine.

We can go to as many locations as you'd like. Although more locations don't always yield better results. At Serendipity, we have found that more leisurely relaxed time to photograph you at location will help us get the most natural photos of you. More varied and happy photography time is what we are usually after. Often what that means is going to a couple of places where we can have a variety of settings and themes, instead of rushing through several photography locations.

One hour of actual photography time with the couple is a good starting point. This can take some time to get after we factor in makeup and preparation time, travel time, eating time, etc. For some couples it takes a little time to get the hang of being photographed and we need to have some time playing and just goofing around to get them comfortable around a camera, while others are too occupied with their wedding—or with one another—to mind a camera pointed at them.

In an hour of location time we could shoot between 200 to 600 images—providing a lot of choice when it comes to selecting photos for the album. With more time we would shoot a bit slower and vary the style of the shots and backdrop more. With even more time we could change location to get some completely different looks and even get a bite to eat. It is best during the location photography that you have some time alone away from you bridal party and guests as this will result in more natural relaxed photographs and it might be the only time during the whole day that you are nearly alone.

Absolutely. Spending time with the groom at home can help the day run more smoothly. It provides an opportunity for us to take family photos and get everyone more comfortable with a camera.

Of course. In fact, at Serendipity, we think that family photography is very important. At the pre-wedding planning session 2-3 weeks before your wedding we go into some detail about how best to organise these shoots.

Most Serendipity packages come with a disk of all the family pictures for you and your family. These are the family pictures shot at each of the houses, after the ceremony and during the reception.

The short answer is that we use Nikon at Serendipity. The long answer is always take a large range of gear on a wedding and it changes from wedding to wedding. Most of it however most remains in the boot of the car—they are there just in case.

There are always 2 professional camera bodies, 2–4 flashes, 50 gigabytes of memory and 4 or more lenses. Remote lighting techniques is a large part our look so there are always some slaves and then other technical photography things as well…

Usually not. Just think of the themes that you want. We will think of some location ideas to get the look that you want while optimising the drive time and available light. Feel free to take advantage of our experience garnered over the thousands of weddings Serendipity have been on. Often with out of town locations a kick start is useful with a few location ideas for us to check out when we arrive in town.

Yes, there are places where we like to photograph—some areas are a little secret and others are quite popular. We often scout out locations ideas as Melbourne is constantly changing, and also to see if we find new inspirations in old locations. We check out if a limo can get there, parking, how the light falls during the day and season and what is near by so we can get some other looks in. With private property, such as cafes, we introduce ourselves and ask permission and about their attitude towards wedding photography—some venues love it, some not so much. We try to resist venues that charge for wedding photography; often, we find they are just more fashionable than more photogenic.

Only if you have asked us to stay through mains at the reception.

While a bright sunny day may be many peoples ideal wedding day—it will hardly appeal to most photographers. A rainy cold day also would not. The perfect day would have cloud or soft light from time to time for portraits and then some sunny conditions for wider landscape and more graphic shots. A bit of rain and wind will add interest and variation in the photography (as much as this idea may not appeal to you). You can find many Serendipity of our favourite albums with photographs set on a rainy day against magnificent clouds.

In years past we made separate plans if there was rain—but such plans never worked. Usually if there is rain during location it makes for great shots with great light, great clouds and great drama. And so often we arrive at the next location the rain has stopped. Also, We usually know enough locations around town to find a good wet weather location to make pictures. If it looks as if there is going to be continuous drizzle then we can make our way to the city where there are a huge number of location ideas for both a modern and older romantic looks.

In the suburbs or if it is a passing shower then railway station, inside the cars, local town halls, an underpass for a grungy look, or often under cover at a suburban shopping strip where the bridal part can grab a spot to eat and use the shop fronts as a back drop.

We're really familiar Asian weddings, and we understand the different ceremonies, customs and traditions of various Asian wedding days, as well as their different emphasis especially compared to a traditional Western wedding. Serendipity have shot over 600 Asian style weddings. We are very accommodating when it comes to pre-shoots on an earlier day. These can often be added in at minimal charge. Asian wedding days can be long with early morning starts for groom then bride preparation and ceremonies before the door ceremonies and then tea ceremonies. Then there is lunch. Often a further civil or church ceremony then follows. Then location shoots into the afternoon.

We understand that an Asian reception has a variety of ceremonial events through out the night including a change of dresses. There a couple of options for the reception. We can go straight to the reception and do the door entry photos and the first hour or so. Or we can come back late such as 8pm for a couple of hours and photograph the cake cutting, first dance and other ceremony when all the guests have arrived. All in all, we like to be really flexible in meeting even subtle differences in your needs.

An Indian style wedding is a great photographic opportunity with the fantastic saturated colours, decorations and emotions. The Hindu Ceremony has hundreds of details and moments that need capturing. Also we find that there is also lots of great food at Indian weddings but we hardly ever get time to try it!

In India, weddings generally last for four or more days. We understand that each day has essential elements and we try to be accommodating with timing on Indian wedding days—especially if one of the days is a weekday. We can often cover both days within the standard package. If possible we will try to incorporate the Mehndi (Henna) day as well.

Serendipity have photographed many Hindu ceremonies and they have all been different. We have shot also shot Muslim, Punjabi (Sikh) and many Sri Lankan ceremonies as well. We have a number of slide shows in the studio that we are proud of.