Charleston SC Wedding Photographer Sarah Beach: Destination Wedding Trends During COVID-19
We had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Beach, one of our besties and favorite wedding photographers in Charleston, South Carolina. This woman radiates positivity and has this bubbly, effervescent personality we can’t get enough of. We sat at the Darling Oyster Bar, enjoyed cocktails and crab dip, and talked about what trends and patterns she’s noticed for couples planning their destination wedding in the Charleston wedding scene during this COVID-19 era.
Charleston, S.C. Wedding Photographer Sarah Beach On Wedding Planning During COVID-19
Shelby Ring:
Sarah, what would you say are some of the biggest things you've changed in the structure of your business as a wedding photographer in this COVID era?
Sarah Beach:
Okay. Mostly, I didn't really change too much because I've always been very wedding client-centric, but I think that I really was able to nurture my clients' relationships with me even further and really just build on that relationship that we had. Many of my clients have trusted me so much-- they're texting me before they text their planner. So, regardless of how much I may be freaking out, I really have had to learn to just be the patient, stable ground and help guide them through.
Taking my client-centric views, adapting to the times, and being more empathetic towards each situation is what's getting me through. I've watched other wedding photographer friends fumble and not know what to do in certain situations, and I help guide them through it, then it would happen to me literally moments later, and I'm like, well, here's what I would do in this situation.
My number one thing is always being empathetic and always remembering to see everything from a bride and groom's perspective. They're freaking out, they're spending tons of money, they're potentially going to lose tons of money. They don't know what to do. They're looking for a wedding professional to get professional advice, and that was where I always try to come in. It's just keeping them in mind, keeping them the center, not worrying so much about money, but more so— asking the question: Are my clients happy? Because at the end of this, I know that if I'm not making my clients happy, it doesn't matter if they still paid me. What matters is I made them happy, I made them comfortable, and I got them through this; I helped guide them through this weird time.
Shelby Ring:
It's crazy. Okay, this is my favorite question: What have you noticed coming into your 2021-2022 wedding season... What are trends you're noticing in the wedding industry, good, bad, or ugly?
Sarah Beach:
So most of the clients I attract are still going forward with their big weddings, which I'm all for. I'm like, "You, do you. It's your day." If you hire me as a wedding photographer, I am there for you. It is your wedding day. It's not my day. It's not my place to tell you how many people you're allowed to have, anything like that. Really, I have noticed more elopements and people taking their weddings to a microwedding.
Shelby Ring:
Yeah. What about your booking availability between 2021 and 2022? What are some observations you've seen?
Sarah Beach:
2021 is insane. I have more weddings booked this year than I've ever booked in previous years. This is awesome for me, which tells me I navigated the whole situation correctly last year. But now I have 2022 and 2023 weddings coming in, which is pretty early for me. Usually, my 2023 weddings don't start coming until about spring. But really, it's hard to look at it anything other than just it's been positive for me. I've beat records. I've navigated a really crazy time that nobody knew how to navigate. We all just worked through it together. And then now I have a record year and then hoping 2022-2023 will be the same.
Shelby Ring:
Do you have any fear or just straight excitement when it comes to a record-breaking year? Just thinking from vendor to vendor, and there's a lot of excitement AND expectation.
Sarah Beach:
My biggest fear is getting COVID and having to hire somebody to shoot in my place because my clients hire me. They don't hire an associate shooter; they hire me. So, that's my biggest thing -- making sure I'm protecting myself. As much as I think that I'm over this situation, I still have to be very careful and practice everything that I can to ensure that I'm healthy and safe.
Shelby Ring:
All right, last question. Coming through last year, where everyone had reschedules, everybody was like, "What am I going to do with all of this time now that's opened up?" What worked for you and your mental health or emotional health to get through the unknown?
Sarah Beach:
What's helped me get through this time is laughing about it. At the very beginning, I actually made an Instagram post about how I refuse to bring anything negative into the situation and how, no matter what, I was going to try to find a positive light in everything. Because there is. You can always look, and you can always find something positive to come out of it. So, my thing is just keeping myself in a mental state where I can figure out, "Okay, here's something small that I can focus on that is happy, no matter how small."
My biggest thing during COVID is when everybody was rescheduling everything between July and August, I had a record-breaking booking season, and everyone else is losing weddings, and I'm gaining weddings for the following year and the next year. So that's what I focused on, was no matter how stressful it got... I lost weddings in 2020. I had a breakup with a couple because I ended up double scheduled, and then they actually had to re-reschedule their wedding and then came back to me to rehire me again for a second time. So, that was also something that I could look at and be like, "Okay, obviously, I'm doing something right here." So, I always just try to focus... find one single thing that's happy or that I can laugh about. If I can laugh about it, or if it makes me smile, I focus on it and go from there.
To see Sarah’s amazing work, visit her website https://sarahbeach.com/
Did you find this interview helpful? If you’re planning your wedding in Charleston, here’s a few other candid interviews with our Charleston wedding industry besties we think you might like:
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It was so fun to chat with Bryan about what he sees from his neck of the woods on the technical production and DJ side of weddings and events happening through this COVID-19 wedding planning era, and how he’s made it through this pandemic era as a creative and an entrepreneur.
We chat. with our girl Blythe Hill — founder and lead designer of Hill & Co. Creative. wedding planning. Blythe is one part sweet, one part firecracker. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder than sitting at the dinner table with Blythe and her team during Taylor and Alyssa’s wedding listening to Blythe tell tales of the chronic balancing act between her roles as a mama, wife, and planner. She’s a favorite of ours!
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