Planning a wedding can be hard work, and at the best of times it can be costly and stressful. This is why many people opt to use a wedding planner. There are a lot of different elements that must come together in with perfect co-ordination; and that takes a high level of organisation, and usually a heft price tag.

With the economy in the stat it is in at the moment, many people are scaling down wedding plans and keeping it simple. Using local trade for different elements of a wedding can be perfect. For example, if you are planning a wedding in a town in the North of England, you might want to opt for a photographer such as Stephen Buckle; Worksop Wedding photographer, who can do a complete wedding photography package at a very reasonable price. You may also want to use a local hotel or function room for the reception. Most hotels will be able to handle the catering for a large number of people at a reasonable price.

There are all kinds of hints and tips for clothing for bargain-hungry wedding organisers. It is possible to hire a wedding dress for the day, which is a low-cost alternative to buying the dress. Many people want to buy their wedding dress so it can be kept as a souvenir, but in reality the dress usually ends up in the back of a wardrobe for the rest of it’s days. For men, charity shops are a viable option for buying suits for the best men. Matching suits can often be found, and are usually of a high quality.

Whatever is decided for the wedding day, it is a once in a lifetime experience, so no expense should be spared in exchange for bad memories. It will be a day that is remembered for the rest of one’s life. Guests will not judge you on the quality of the food from the buffet. If you are looking to cut costs, make sure you do them in the right areas, and do not sacrifice the big day for the sake of money.

You may have joined the photo-sharing craze to share your family vacation photos, but have you thought about other uses for photo sharing?

Here are just a few ideas:

Scrapbooking:
Show off your creative projects. You can design scrapbook pages and enhance them with clipart using software like Paint Shop Photo Album or FotoFinish and then upload them to a photo sharing site for everyone to enjoy.

Hobbies:
Perhaps you belong to a cross-stitching club or the other end of the spectrum, a motorcycle or classic car club. You can share your best cross-stitch projects or pictures of you with your Harley or ‘57 Chevy with other club members.

Class Reunions:
What better way to share reunion photos with former class members across the miles than in an online photo album, so all can view and reminisce.

Arts and Crafts Portfolio:
Do you design jewelry, paint or make woodcarvings or other crafts to sell? A digital photo gallery is a great way to show off your pieces, and you can add your own captions, prices, etc.

Genealogy:
If you are in charge of recording your family’s history, organize old family photos in a digital album to share with distant family members. Chances are, old photos will need some repair for cracks, fading, spots, etc. You can easily repair photos yourself using photo software like Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro.

School Events:
Create an online album for pictures of football or basketball games, proms, graduation parties and other school events to share with classmates.

Weddings:
You can design an elegant photo album and let those who couldn’t attend the wedding see the bride walk down the aisle and “virtually” experience the conga line at the reception. Weddings were made for photo sharing!

Rubber Stamping Designs:
A photo gallery of your rubber stamp creations is a great way to showcase them for fellow stamp artists.

Okay, you get the picture. Use your imagination and you’ll find dozens of opportunities for sharing your photos.

PHOTO SHARING SITES AND SOFTWARE

The next step is how do you do it? That’s easy too. With the digital camera craze comes a proliferation of photo sharing sites and software. The top sites include Ofoto, Shutterfly and Snapfish, which give you simple, free software so you can make basic edits such as adjust the contrast, crop and remove red-eye. You can quickly upload your images to their website and put photos in different albums, name the albums and add captions. Then you just email your friends the link to your album. The good news is it’s free; the down side is that some sites limit the number of photos you can share. These sites, of course, will also print your photos for as little as 22 cents each and mail them to you; those who view your albums can also order prints.

There are some great services dedicated to photo sharing that offer unlimited photo storage space for a nominal fee. These include Pixagogo, which is a web-based service for sharing, organizing and storing your digital photos inside instant albums that can be viewed by anyone you want. It’s an easy way to share photos with others, and an excellent means of backing up valuable photos or publishing illustrations on a web site or a market place. For a $5 monthly membership fee, you get unlimited secure storage of your original images of any size for as long as you want. Pixagogo’s features include easy drag & drop photo uploading, the ability to create elegant online albums and full screen slide shows, share selected album links with family and friends via a simple email link, and a self-organizing photo timeline. You can also order prints on Fuji paper at competitive prices.

There are also several inexpensive software applications for photo sharing on the web, including FotoFinish and the SendPix sharing feature of ACDSee 6.0. With both programs you can email photos directly from the application at sizes you specify. FotoFinish also gives you 20MB of free personal web space to upload and share your albums or individual photos. ACDSee lets you share up to 50 photos in an unlimited number of albums on their server at no charge for up to 30 days. It also has an HTML photo album generator so you can create web page photo albums to upload to your own site.

Whatever method you choose, sharing your pics on the net is a great timesaver with lots of opportunity for creativity.

Valerie Goettsch publishes the digital photography website http://www.digitalphotos101.com featuring reviews of photo editing and album software and digital photo printing services.

You’ve probably seen digital kiosk photo printing centers before at some point in your life and may have even used their services. However, if you haven’t used one before they can be a bit intimidating, kind of like using self check-out at a grocery store for the first time. No one wants to be standing at a printing kiosk looking like an idiot trying to figure out what in the world all of those different buttons do. It’s better to just use an online service and learn how to get digital photos into picture form within the confines of your own home or go to the store and let the professionals handle the job, right? Well if you think that way I’d like to put your anxieties to rest by explaining how using digital kiosk photo printing is actually pretty easy.

The process of working a digital photo kiosk begins with a user putting their camera’s memory card into the machine. After completing this task, simply use the buttons on the touch screen to select the photos that you would like to have printed. While it may take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the buttons, once you get the hang of it there is no problem. You might even be allowed to do a little editing on the pictures before they are printed but this depends on the kiosk used. After selecting the prints of choice, you will either receive the photos instantly or have to wait an hour or so to pick up the prints from the store photo lab.

Even though using digital kiosk photo printing is fairly simple, there are warnings that must be heeded. Kiosks can vary from machine to machine especially in the area of photo quality. In fact, sometimes the kiosks don’t even work at all. Assuming that you have access to a working photo kiosk, it is probably best to use the machines that take an hour for the store’s photo mini lab to develop the photos so that you can get the best quality prints.

To view our list of recommended sources for digital photo printing online,
visit Recommended Sources For
Digital Photo Printing Online.