Wedding Spots in Ocean City, Maryland

Ocean City Wedding Spots Getting married in Ocean City and you are not sure where you'd like to get have the wedding location or reception? Allow me to inform you of the places that make for some great Ocean City Wedding Photography spots and give you my thoughts about them. Please keep in mind that these Ocean City venues are looked at from a photographer's point of view and what I've experienced there working.

Seacrets - a great place to check out, you can't go wrong with Jamaica USA in Ocean City. Often times couples book their dance club area which can fit a lot of people. What I liked most was the staff was off the hook friendly, and being there as a wedding photographer, they let me go everywhere I wanted to go to get the good shot. This place offers some great sunset shots, out by the palm trees and on their pier, plenty of little hidden areas that will make for some interesting photos. They have their own catering and chatting with one couple they said it was at a really good price. Keep in mind in the summer this place is a mad house but in the off season its cozy and relaxing.

Fager's Island - Pretty close to Seacrets which offers a nice reception area, hotel close by, great food and the staff was really nice. There are so many cool places in Fagers to get great photos; you often getting lost and you can take a couple to like 10 - 15 different spots and make 50 -75 images unique. Plenty of palm trees, a gazebo on the water, the upper deck reception area is a little tighter but for smaller weddings this is a really good place.

Lighthouse Sound - this little gem is hidden away right outside of Ocean City, a little ways over the first Hwy 90 bridge in into Bishopville. It's located right on a golf course which is a good thing because you have beautiful landscapes to get great photos on and one thing to consider is adding some time with the photographer as you might like to take a golf cart to some of these very pretty photo spots. You'll end up having Ocean City on the bay as you backdrop which makes for an awesome photo. The staff is great, food it good too, I like the huge fireplace they have indoors, and the overall area is able to accommodate a lot of guests. If you get a chance to get you and your guests together for a group photo, you have a couple of hills to get height on the crowd.

Golden Sands - this hotel and condominium is located around the north end of Ocean City right on the beach. You can get married right on their little patch of sand or you can get closer to the water and have your ceremony there. Depending on the time of day and weather conditions I might lean towards closer to the beach, were you'll have more sun, the building itself is cuts out a lot of sun for sunset ceremonies. They have a really lovely reception area up on their top floor; hope you aren't afraid of heights. Nice dance floor, easy to accommodate a lot of guests, and even though you are up so high take advantage of the rear of the building on the 22nd floor for some quick photos of the sun setting.

The Clarion - another hotel not too far away from the Golden Sands, and every bit just a good. What I found unique about this place, if you foresee bad weather, this place has several giant rooms for having the ceremony and reception. The whole inside offers a lot of great spots to take some fun and unique photos and chances are you will have sun for your wedding, you have the beach right there. keep in mind the building will shadow you and your guests quite a bit, so by getting closer to the water, you'll enjoy some better photo opportunities. They have an onsite coordinator here, Lisa I believe who is super nice and will bend over backwards to help you.

Ocean Pines Beach Club - Located on the Ocean side of Coastal Hwy and not be confused with the Ocean Pines Yacht Club and Ocean Pines Country Club. If you aren't careful you'll find family and friends heading to the yacht club or country club and might miss out. Here is another place that has their own patch of sand close to the main building structure and if you are planning a sunset wedding you might find a very distinct shadow going on here which depending on your timing you might deal with as they have a nice huge deck to place chairs on for your guests to sit on. They have a nice little second floor section where all the brides end up getting ready at. The poor guys end up hanging out in the basement area, down under the deck. Part of the deck wraps around and makes for some lovely sitting and eating outside. Plenty of spots for a DJ or Band to set up and while the guests are relaxing you can roll out on the beach for those beautiful sunset photos.

The Beaches - Ocean City beaches are some great beaches to get married on. Unlike the Delaware beaches right up the road they don't require permits to be on the beach or get married on the beach. Getting married in Delaware isn't as easy as in Maryland where you can walk right out there on the beach with the wedding minister and say your vows and walk right back off. All the beach ceremony's I've photographed, it happens 100 percent of the time, were you have very friendly and accommodating people that step aside for you to get married and often times they cheer, clap, and whistle when you get to "you may now kiss the bride". To get the better photographs I'd recommend scheduling your ceremony around Sunset whenever possible and the next best time would be around sunrise. Those high noon weddings always end up with dark shadows under the eyes and lots of other unpleasant features. And if you can decorate the beach a little with an archway, flowers, tiki torches, or something. A naked beach is ok, but it really reflects well and looks like wedding photos when you have things to enhance the photo. For brides I'd stay away from heels in the sand, it's a no brainer but every year someone does it and it's difficult on the bride to walk in. Also a runner would be pointless, as it will get ripped to shreds.

There are many other wonderful places that I have not mentioned here that I could turn this article into a full blown book, but I wanted to name a few of my favorites. Some other ideas for wedding locations in and around Ocean City, Maryland that I've photographed and liked: Assateague Island State Park
Coconut Malorie
Catched 54 (used to be known as Sharks Cove)
Ocean Pines Yacht Club - Ocean Pines
Ocean Pines Country Club - Ocean Pines
Ocean City Inlet on the Beach
Harrisons Harbour Watch - Inlet area
The Hilton - Ocean Side Fresco's - Bayside
Macky's - Bayside
Princess Bayside - Bayside
Princess Royale - Ocean side
Carousel Hotel - Ocean side

Have a Happy Wedding Day!

Doing business right

My wife’s friend brought her computer to me to get fixed, it’s among one of the things I like to do along with photography and web design. While I was in the Air Force I picked up this talent and once I got out I did freelance computer repair. Well my wife’s friend told me she took her computer to a computer repair store a year ago and at $100 an hour, she asked them to check it out in an hour, not to go over the $100 mark and to let her know how much to fix it. They called her and said your computer is fixed and ready to be picked up, and your bill is $800. Well that is just wrong, after some conversations with the owner/manager they knocked it down to $132. She said fine and she’ll come by and pick it up. The one technician offered to bring it to her on his lunch break. He arrived and she handed him a check for $132 and he said it was going to be an additional $95 for delivery. You can imagine how upset she was.

My point of the whole story is, that is wrong. You shouldn’t do business like that. It’s not how I do business and it goes against everything I believe in. My belief is to treat others as you would like to be treated, to be fair and honest with each other. And that’s how I do business with my photography clients, I’m not going to force a sale on you, or talk you into something you don’t want or need. I’m here to provide a service that you want, and I like to provide that service to you the way you want.

On a side note, my wife’s friend is also the mother of the little boy I photographed a year ago. It was a treat to see him again.

A Peyton and Zach Wedding

The Zach attack!
The Peyton Experiment!

Both can be said here as affectionate ways of describing the two. My buddy Justin who is a DJ referred this couple to me for photography and about 2 – 3 weeks before the wedding I hadn’t a clue what I was getting into. Usually I’d have a couple of phone calls with a client before the wedding discussing different aspects of their wedding or I’d have a chance to do an Engagement portrait session if they lived locally. In Peyton and Zach case, Justin gave them my number and I met them about a one week later at a bridal show in Ocean City.

What made this couple unique and what made this wedding special for me was I really had to relying on my ability to think on my feet. I knew the church they were going to be getting married in as I had photographed a wedding there the year before. And their reception was at a house down around Assateague State Park. Anyway, the couple was very flexible with getting photos; I was able to pull them away from the reception twice to get some stunning photos. Zach and Peyton were also pretty creative with what photos they themselves wanted. The combination of creative ideas made for a fabulous time photographing.

Holiday Photo Time - Parties and Pets

It’s time for all the holiday parties to happen! We recently had our Squadron Holiday party at Dover Air Force base which was a great time. I was there in a photographer capacity but enjoyed hanging out with friends and sampled some of the food there. Every one there really liked the fact that I could take their photo and print it right on the spot. There was also a second holiday party going on that took advantage of photos I was printing there. It was so much fun that they had a 70s theme going on, which made for some interesting photos.
Because so many folks had a good time with me, I ended up booking up two more parties for December and a portrait shoot in our studio. It’s pleasant to know my Mitsubishi Printers are finally paying off. I’m hoping for next year to not only be booked up for Christmas parties but also for Halloween.

I also got called again to photograph Pets with Santa at the Gold Coast Mall, in Ocean City and once again I was happy to do it. I enlisted the help of my father to play Santa and my good friend Sue LeMar to help set everything up. This year with Pets with Santa, we had LeMar Custom Framing design custom mats for the customers for their 5x7 photos that went over really well. The mats had cute little paw prints and Season’s Greetings stamped on the mats.

Biker Cowboy photo shoot on a Sunday

My mother called me up the other day and wanted to get some photos of her friend so that he could give them to family and friends. In these current economical times it makes a great inexpensive gift, giving photos in frames and it comes across more sentimental. I was pleasantly surprised by the gentleman’s outfit and look he was wanting to go with, and that of a biker / cowboy. Kind of rare. His name was Jacob by the way, and he made for a good photo subject.
We started off with some warm up shots, playing around. And then we start to focus on some of the looks Jacob wanted and then played around with some creative ideas. After the shoot, which didn’t take long at all, he came here to the shoot with some specific looks in mind and we were able to hit them all on the mark and he was happy.
After that, I imaged they were just pleased to have regular 5 x 7s printed on the spot, but I whipped out some effects, like black and white, and filters that made it look like an old time photo. They weren’t in any big hurry, so they hung out and watched as I pull out some photoshop frames and effects that transformed the images into way more than they were expecting. They were happy. And I was happy to have an interesting subject to photo. It’s always rare to get men to want to be photographed and when you get a chance it’s fun to take some interesting shots.

Memorable Milestones Event Services

I was providing some videography services to a wedding Memorable Milestones Events was providing coverage for, and they were working great. I've seen alot of weddings where the bride and groom can seem uneasy, a little lost, or things go pretty wrong, but not when these ladies are taking care of things. I highly recommend a wedding planner for every wedding, it just makes things run so smoothly and takes the load and worry off the bride's shoulders.

Check them out at http://www.memorablemilestonesllc.com/

Donna Duffy - (302) 383-3294‎

Wedding Tips

1. It is best to have your flowers delivered to where you are getting dressed at least an hour before you are going to leave for the ceremony.This allows some extra time in case the florist is late and some time, as well, for the photographer to pose you with your flowers.
2. Before the wedding day, be sure to inform your family members including parents, grandparents and siblings that they need to remain at the ceremony site after the wedding to be included in formal group photographs.
3. When planning the schedule of your wedding day be sure to include adequate travel time from location to location, the expected length of time for a receiving line, 35-45 minutes for the photographer to pose the formal photographs and 15 additional minutes at an outdoor location with the bridal party.

Bubbles – to bubble it up at Weddings

I recently had a wedding on a Friday and Saturday and both utilized bubbles after their ceremony has concluded. And in both cases it was a bit of a hassle to get working right. I’ve been to about 10 other ceremonies where they had bubbles there and they never even used them. I think in a lot of cases couples dreamed of walking through the bubbles but either couldn’t coordinate it right or forgot about them entirely. So I’m hoping to pass along my experience with the hopes it will help. What typically happens after a ceremony, the Bride and Groom kiss, they are now husband and wife and start walking back down the aisle. Well the couple could just walk out the door and get into the car but it doesn’t work out like that. One main factor is you have to get the people outside first and ready for you. And the second problem is because most couples go the traditional route of not wanting to see each other before the ceremony; they usually end up doing the formal photos after the ceremony. So you can’t expect the people to wait outside for 30 minutes while the pictures are being taken.
One idea that would be super helpful is to get your formal photos taken before the ceremony. By doing this, it will help you tremendously because you will get the wonderful shots, without tying up all your time after the ceremony not to mention if the couple is nervous, and we all know they will be, this takes that nervous edge way. It’s like a mini glimpse of the future that can set the bride and groom at ease. You don’t have to rush, and you can definitely get all the shots you want, and more. Another idea is to get your ushers or various family members to help spread the word of what is going to happen. Every wedding is a bit different, and so most guests won’t know what is going to happen. I personally, as the photographer would leave the bride and groom inside the ceremony location, go outside and rally up the guests. Being accustom to working with large number of people, I’d give a shout out letting the family and friends know the couple is about to exit and would like a bubble storm. And to get your bubble blowers ready, set, BLOW!
But if I’m not there as your photographer, I’d suggest appointing someone to orchestra that for you. It can make for some awesome fun photos that you’ll love.