Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle & Michael Blair.
Hi Michelle & Michael, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Shortly after our honeymoon, when we were looking through photos I (Michelle) had taken during our trip, Michael commented that they were actually really good. I had always loved taking pictures and remember playing with my first camera when I was around five years old. A pink film camera. I would dress up my barbies, pose them and take pictures – mom and dad would take the film and get it developed for me and I just loved getting them back. One day, after Michael got home from work, he surprised me with two professional DSLR cameras, lens and everything else you could imagine needing to do photography on a professional level. I remember thinking he was crazy but he told me he would teach me the camera, having the eye for photography was the hard part and I already had that. Michael grew up learning photography from his father in the film days so he was able to teach me what I needed to know – and luckily he had a lot of patience haha. Within a few months, we had booked our very first wedding by putting an ad on craigslist. Little did we know that one post would lead to over a decade of a life-changing career, one that is strong as ever 12 years later.
Over the first year, we learned a lot about how to run a business, how NOT to run a business and just how challenging it could be to work a full-time job AND run your own business. Michael was working as an applications analyst for Ascension Health and many nights would meet me at Panera breads to meet with potential clients or shoot engagement sessions. Weekends were of course full of weddings. Within a year, we realized we were having to turn away a large number of inquiries because we simply didn’t have enough availability, so Michael started reaching out to other local photographers to give them the leads. We were surprised to find out rather quickly that the wedding photography industry here in Nashville was not the most welcoming and friendly. We would give out leads to receive not a single thank you, and the favor was certainly never returned. It was then that we decided to hire on our own photographers to cover dates that we ourselves were already booked. We ended up in 3 states, close to 30 employees that entailed not only photographers but videographers, photo-booth operators and DJs with uplighting! We covered Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida. We became the most highly rated with the highest number of reviews on Wedding Wire and The Knot in the Nashville market.
When we were about seven years into our business, we made the decision to take on business partners – another husband and wife team. They had similar work ethics, fantastic work and a drive and passion like none other! We opened a studio downtown that served as a great place to hold meetings with our clients.
While we had amassed amazing success, we were starting to get really burnt out with keeping such an intense schedule. As a company, we were taking on close to 200 weddings a year, each that came with albums, engagement sessions and other extras. We also chose to do all editing in house for every event which meant an incredibly challenging workload on the back end. Also, the industry started to shift away from 4, 6 and 8 hour wedding packages to “All Day Coverage”, something Michael and I were strongly opposed too. We would shoot 12 and 14 hour weddings back to back and the wear and tear on the body and our equipment was profound, not to mention the increased editing load.
After almost a decade, we made the difficult decision to sell our portion of the business to our partners and start fresh with a new business model.
While doing large weddings was our bread and butter, we had also been doing elopement weddings for 8 of the 10 years we had our business and absolutely loved them! With the large traditional weddings, it had become so much more about who could spend the most to impress family and friends, traditions the couples didn’t want but were obligated to participate in and overwhelmed, exhausted brides and grooms. We used to hear our couples say, “we are just ready for it to be over” when we would ask if they were excited about their wedding. We thought that was so sad and crazy – we wanted to offer an alternative! We decided to focus our new business on strictly small, intimate elopements. This would bring us back to the parts of weddings we loved – getting to spend time with the couple and capture their love AND it would allow couples to have the day THEY truly want and have it be about them and not what others want.
Almost three years later, we couldn’t have made a better decision. Our business now allows us to connect with couples from all over the world. They are people from all different walks of life with all different budgets but with one thing in common – they want to celebrate their day the way they want! Many chose to elope as a couple and many bring along their closest family and friends. Some chose to elope in a Nashville venue and others choose to hike up a mountain or out by a waterfall.
We do quite a bit of traveling around the state of Tennessee for our elopements and are blessed to be able to do it together, not only as a married couple but as best friends – with our fur-son Cooper.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Like anything there have been ups and downs, when you run your own business you are constantly learning and tweaking things along the way. I don’t think that ever changes!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Weddings are high stress and don’t usually come with a lot of moments you can recreate if you miss the shot. Elopements are 100x more intense in terms of not being able to miss anything. We work in incredibly short timeframes, you have to be on your A game, know you’re lighting and your posing. It’s a fine balance being able to make the couples feel at ease while working fast and efficiently.
We also specialize in both natural light and strobe photography, something we feel is essential to be a successful wedding photographer. You never know what lighting situation you might find yourself in so being comfortable in all types of shooting conditions is very important. If you have a 30 minute elopement you don’t have time to be unsure – you have to know your stuff and be confident.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Our favorite elopements are those that include 4-legged family members!
Contact Info:
- Email: elope@elopementsnashville.com
- Website: www.elopementsnashville.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elopementsofnashville/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elopementsofnashville
Image Credits
Ourselves (Elopements of Nashville)
