(In PNW zone 7+) Oh my God ... CONSIDER not deadheading the later season flowers! Leave a summer flower set! I made a typical pruning choice to refresh for white flowers for a couple years, before I discovered a secret hiding within this stunning hydrangea. Yes Wedding Gown has amazing double white flowers, in lacecap form, whose center keeps opening ever smaller florets, forming an stunningly elegant full flattened display. Yes one can cut the Snow White flowers for display use and be rewarded with yet more ... it does not fall into slumber. I too read about nice fall color and just assumed it was just the leaves. And our late October leaf color is now getting there. However, make no mistake, the Evil Queen is hiding there too! No written description mentioned that the white flowers turn so deep ruby red in color! I was shocked, but happily ever after. As the fully opened white flowers, now a couple months old aged, they started to spot pink. I would have normally cut them off to get more white flowers ... hey it reblooms! Over the next few weeks the spots density increased and darkened until soild stunning deep red florets were formed. The flower heads remained upright for a month display of glory hovering over green leaves, (The flower petals felt dry at this stage and I should have cut some for dry floral arrangements.) Just as the fall leaf color peaked the florets twistwd downwards and lightened into deep magenta and cranberry red colors While still in a large tub last year I got strong flower production but not much fall leaf color. In a 50% sun location this year and same tub with 3' tall plant the late fall mature leaf color is currently a deep, almost blackish plum red color. The new growth leaves on stem ends are still green, giving a festive mosaic look. I like the effect in this yard location and will plant here. The secret is out. Wedding Gown is dramatically beautiful in all stages. At a compact ~4' it is highly useful for landscape effects in front of taller bushes. It's like having cranberry bush fall color wonder, which tolerates partial sun, and lavishly provides a white floral display all summer. I'd buy Wedding Gown for the red fall performance alone. As a grower I could call call it Red (or Drama?) Queen and let buyers be totally shocked by the unexpected white Spring phase. The lable would just say red late season flowers deeping in color with age. Anybody else lured into missing this dramatic red flower phase? (Top Photo taken late October with ruby red flowers lightening towards deep magenta and cranberry red tones.)

As you know I have very strong feelings of affection for you... friendly type feeling that is. I miss our e-mail swaps! Feel free to drop me a chat mail anytime. I'm delighted to see you found someone special... he looks like a great guy. I regretted that we live so far apart as I would have loved to have met you when you were single. Hope life brings you and your family the comfort and security you all deserve. I was in particular touched that Bob's family still considers you one of them!... good family is forever. love you much!... take care of yourself first so you have the strength to keep up with that large group. : ) lyra

As a wedding photographer myself, I have to agree with Tess. I understand the initial desire to have the digital negatives or the film negatives to make your own prints. However, there are some thing you need to understand before doing this. 1. No one works for free. If a photog is giving away a CD of images, you can be absolutely sure that you are paying for them someplace else, like in the upfront fees. Wedding photography is a business, like the limo service, the cake, the DJ service. It's all calculated and any wedding photog who's making a living won't be giving away his/her work for free. 2. Some of the photographer's costs to take into consideration; $15000 equipment taken to the wedding. $3000 editing machine at home, equipment and liability insurance. HOURS and HOURs of processing your photos AFTER a 10hr day of shooting. ...many more hours processing print orders and albums. AND equipment takes a TON of abuse at a wedding This very expensive gear can need replacing upgrading every 18 months or less!!! 3. Hours before wedding charging LOTS of battery power, cleaning equipment, etc. 4. Web space and site fees (can be very expensive). ...poing being; good photographers are not making as much as you think they are when you first see their prices. Many are just scraping by. If a couple really want the digital negatives to their wedding, I'm certainly willing to build that into my pricing and give it to them. It saves me a lot of time later to do it this way and I have the money upfront! ...BONUS! BUT, here's the kicker for me. A good print is only as good as the lab printing it. My equipment is all calibrated to match my printer. What is seen on my monitor is what the final prints WILL look like. If you take a CD of my images to walmart and get prints made, I can personally guarantee that they will not match colors, aspect ratios, etc. You aren't going to get a professional print. Then a couple takes those washed out, odd-cropped prints home and show their friends/family and there's my advertising. ...not professional. This isn't the market I want to cater to. Additionally, when digital negatives come out of my camera, they have received no processing. They are flat, unsaturated, unsharp, etc. I choose to do ALL of this processing in post, as to provide the highest quality final image. What you are paying for to have me shoot your wedding day is my time and talent as a photographer. When you order prints from me, I build into that cost, the extensive time it takes me to post-process all those images, to calibrate my equipment regularly to match my pro labs printers, to resize your prints for the sizes/ratios you order. In the end, this is how you end up with a killer product...not a kiosk-printer's rendition of my work. So, if I'm going to give away a CD of negatives, they are going to be just that...the negatives, having received none of this processing. In short, the prints from this CD are not going to look the way you want them to. I think, as a Bride/Groom, what you really need to do is decide what your ultimate goal is. Do you want cheap prints that you can pass around at will and do what you want with? OR do you want a professional, high-quality collection of memories from your most-important day? Ultimately, the answer to that question should help guide you to the right photographer. Talk to your photographer before hand. UNDERSTAND what you're getting, what your not getting and why. I spend hours with my potential clients doing this. If a B&G are not a match for what I offer, I have no problem being upfront about this and it always works out best for both parties in the end. Ask questions and get answers. If you don't like the answers move on to another photographer...BUT realize that it doesn't do anyone any good to complain about prices, not getting certain shots, not getting a certain style, etc... after the wedding. You should be absolutely confident in these things before putting down your deposit. Some other questions to ask yourself when considing asking a photographer to give away his/her work: -Will you ask the pastry chef to give you the top tier of cake for free? -Will you ask the limo driver to give you the last 1/4 of the trip for free? -Will you ask the reception venue to give you the back 20 tables/plates for free? -Will you ask the bar to give away spirits when you only want to pay for free beer? -Will you ask for 25% off of the dress or 3 of the tuxes for free? Wedding photographers are professionals too. They deserve to be paid for their work. Like Tess said, if professional images are not worth paying for to you, then you always have uncle Bob's and aunt Suzie's point-n-shoot images. A good wedding photographer WILL work with you and get you a wedding package that you love and that they can provide and still feed the family. I know I will. What I won't do, is give away my work or pretend to be able to provide something that I really can't or won't. Honesty is the BEST choice...always. -daniel

As another wedding photographer, please consider this advice. First a little disclaimer; it would be 10X easier for me to shoot a wedding and hand you a CD of all the images. That would literally save me about 10 hours of work AFTER the wedding day processing images and also money to provide you with the proofing. I could charge you for the dig. negs and the copyright release and be done with it, moving on to the next wedding much faster. Here's why you should consider NOT buying digital negatives. Color Calibrated monitors of the photographer will give you the colors you think you're going to get. This will almost surely NOT happen by taking a CD to WalGreens or Walmart. Archival quality prints from the photographer means they'll last. ...and probably the biggest reason to order prints from the photographer is the post processing involved. This includes, aspect ratios, color-correction, sharpening, saturation, contrast, noise-reduction, dodging & burning, B&W and Sepia conversions and MUCH more. Like I said, I spend about 8-10 hours doing this processing for the average wedding. Unless you want/know how to do this yourself, digital negs may not be as good as it sounds. Few, if any, photographers are going to spend this time processing images to hand over to you on a CD. They are going to give you the untouched, unprocessed digital images. ...in short, they aren't going to look as good as you'd expect. Why would they, they haven't been 'developed' yet in the digital darkroom. The professional digital wedding photographer has skills that extend way beyond the camera into the areas mentioned above. ...just something to consider. My goal with wedding photography is to leave Brides & Grooms with a feeling of satisfaction and amazement! I feel strongly that a good portion of the "art" of digital photography is finished in the post processing. A photographer selling you unprocessed digital negs is selling you an unfinished product, in my opinion. Now, if you happen to be a whiz on the computer and are capable of and have the time to process your own digital wedding negs, then go for it! By the way, if you are a bride /groom who has purchased digital negs from your photographer and have realized that the prints don't look like you expected... I offer to process those images for you (as long as you own the copyright) for a minimal fee. Get in touch! daniel@dgmphotography.net -daniel