International Wedding Photographers ZaraZoo Wedding Photography – Cape Town

About a week ago we posted the E-session of Eimear and Steve and this week Monday, we did their wedding at the Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa.

We had a winning recipe:

• Pretty bride
• Good looking groom
• Easy going couple and the perfect weather conditions
• A world class venue

…and see the results!

Photographer:  Stefan Steenkamp   Assistant:  Andre van Niekerk

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I have visited Bredasdorp 4 times in the last 2 months and have grown quite fond of this little town.  This is the second post in a 4 part series on the town.  Be notified of the next post by RSS

Take 1 – Bredasdorp Square

Take 2 – Wedding of Nikki & Antoni

Take 3 – Bredasdorp Square revisited – detail shots

Take 4 – Wedding of Thereza & Leon (20 Dec)

Last week I wrote about my anticipation of Nikki and Antoni’s wedding in Bredasdorp.  Well, here are the photos.  This wedding exceeded my wildest expectations!

The ceremony was conducted at the local NG church and the reception at Firlane House.   For the reception, an enormous free-form tent by Nomadik was stretched over the pool and lawn at the back to create a 5 star venue that hosted about 180 guests.

Photographer:  Stefan Steenkamp

Assistant: Bernard Bravenboer (see his blog post)

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It was our first time working at Laborie and we were astonished by their level of service and professionalism.  It was very apparent that Van Aardt (groom) and Liesl are very much in love – they could not keep their hands off each other.

The bridal preps were done at Klein Vredenburg guest house, close to Laborie.   Andre’s creativity blossomed here with this shot of the shoes, below (hanging from a chandelier)

Photographer:  Andre van Niekerk

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While living in London I was often reminded of the rivalry between the Irish and the English.  But Eimear (Irish) and Steve (English) are proving the old feat obsolete.  They are in love and bubbling with excitement.

The couple decided to do things different and booked the Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa, close to Camps Bay for their wedding.  The Twelve Apostles specialises in smaller intimate weddings and this will be no exception.  Only 30 guests will attend, of which all are foreigners.

When meeting the couple before the wedding we often do an e-session, just to calm the nerves and to get used to each other.  Their e-session was done at Sonstraal Dam in Durbanville.

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Some of you might know that we published a bridal planning book this year.  The first issue of the Little Pink Book was for the Western Cape and now we are working on the Gauteng issue.  It will be launched in April 09 at the Wedding Expo at The Dome in JHB.

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Ever since an advertiser in our publication, Little Pink Book, invited us to his guest house in Bredasdorp,  we have grown quite fond of this small town close to Cape Agulas (the most southerly tip of Africa).

In the space of 2 months, we have now spent 3 weekends in and around Bredasdorp and I am off to shoot a wedding there this coming weekend. The ceremony will be done in the magnificent NG Church in town and the reception will be held at Firlane House, the guest house I referred to in the top of this post.

I would like to say that Zoon Jacobs, the owner of Firlane House, is now a good friend of mine. He is also a very creative individual and a very inspiring entrepreneur.  Apart from having an architectural practice, he also owns a gift shop, coffee shop and 2 guest houses in Bredasdorp.

So this coming weekend, apart from shooting the wedding, I will also do some shots of the restaurant, gift shop and guest houses.  Here are a few photos I took this past weekend when Zoon invited us to celebrate a friends’ birthday party at Bredasdorp Square.

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This is the 2nd post of our 3 part series on the top 10 wedding venues in the Western Cape, in our experience.  At ZaraZoo we have the opportunity to work at the most amazing venues.  We feel that we must share our knowledge with prospective brides to make their dream wedding a reality!

In Part 1 of this series, we started the countdown with:

10.  Lanzerac Manor – Stellenbosch

9.  Vrede en Lust – Simmondium

8.  Haute Cabriere – Franschhoek

This week we will feature Strandkombuis, La Petite Dauphine and Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa.

7.  Strandkombuis

For a beach wedding, there is arguably no better venue than Strandkombuis.  The ceremony is done on the beach and the reception in the Strandkombuis restaurant.  The restaurant, overlooks the crashing waves and can seat 150 guests.  It has an uncomplicated and rustic feel, with wooden benches and tables.  The menu is packed with traditional west coast dishes,  fish, crayfish, mussels and pot bread.

This venue is ideal for those couples that like an informal beach wedding at a very rustic and natural location.  Conveniently, the B&B is just next door to the restaurant.   It has a capacity of up to 90 guests.

Strandkombuis contact details:     +27 82 575 9683     |  strandkombuis@mweb.co.za  |  Website

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Andre will be shooting Karen & Wayne’s wedding in December.  We have an E-session with all our couples to get familiar with each other before the wedding day.  It helps to calm the nerves and make sure the bride and groom are relaxed when it counts most.

Camps Bay was the setting for this shoot – before the big rains…  It was perfect day, with blue skies and very little wind.  The drawback to shooting in such a sunny day is that the sun casts very harsh shadows and that makes it quite tricky from a photographers point of view.

Wedding ceremony:  Springfield Catholic Church

Reception:  Little Stream in Constantia

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This is another one aimed at our photographer subscribers, but anyone can really try this and have some fun.

I stumbled across this a while ago on a Wedding Photography forum, Wedding Togs, that I belong to.This web application measures your colour IQ – it can be done yes!  You have to arrange the colours by hue and then you get scored according to your accuracy.  The lower your score, the better you see colour.  Andre scored the perfect 0!

Do the Color IQ.

Cathy and Saul are getting married at Boschendal Wine Estate in February next year.  Cathy is my sister in law, so it was a very relaxed and fun shoot.

Like the shoot I did at the Bang Bang Club in Cape town less than a week ago, I again had my doubts on how safe it would be to shoot in town… but again I was pleasantly surprised!  Cape Town is safe and has so much to work with; the mountain, the city buildings; the artwork…

Photographer:  Stefan Steenkamp

Assistant:  Andre van Niekerk

The next two images was taken on the platform close of the municipal & Artscape buildings.  This interesting piece of art was a great feature to work with.  Cathy and Saul were up for anything and that made my work easy.

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This is the classic story of the South African “boer seun” going to London and getting hitched with a British girl.  Well, Deborah is actually Scottish…

Johan & Deborah booked out the whole Vrede en Lust for friends and family to enjoy a “Wedding Weekend” in the Cape Winelands.  It was the perfect day, clear blue skies, no wind and hot! Despite the 32 degrees Celsius, they were up for everything!

We got the most awesome shots of them in the wheat fields, with the blue Franschhoek mountains in the background.  The one below is my favourite.

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Sorry brides, but this post probably will not appeal to you…  This post is for the other half of our readership, the photographer and bloggers…

If you have a blog, you most definitely have heard of Technorati.  It is a search engine for blogs and updates as new posts are done on its listed blogs.  The good news is that joining is free.  Anyone can submit their blog here.

Technorati ranks your blog and the higher your rank, the bigger the better the chance that it will appear in searches done on their site.  Furthermore, they encourage blogs to link to each other.  The more blogs that link to yours, the higher your rank and the higher your blog will come up in searches.

This system is called “Authority”.  For each link on another blog to yours, you get one “Authority point”  The more Authority points you have, the higher your rank, the more visible your site will be.  And the rest is exponential, as we all know.

I have been tracking my Technorati ranking

for the last 2 weeks.  With each post I did, the ranking increased by a meager 1000 places.  It started at 4 800 000th blog in the world.

But… that was without any “Authority points”

Today I got my first “Authority point” and that boosted my Ranking by more than 2 million places!!!!Our blog is now 2 600 000th in the world.  Still a long way to go, but a great challenge.

So this is what I suggest to the readers of our blog.

1. Open yourself a Technorati account (if you have a blog).
2. Write a post where you link to our blog (http://www.zara-zoo.com/blog).
3. We will return the favour and link to your blog in one of our next posts.

By following this formula, we will increase the rankings of all the blogs in our photographers network. We will become more visible to the world (and South Africa).

If this post does not make sense please leave us a comment.