“The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.” Richard M. DeVos
And so English Tavern is born…
The short story goes something like this… Justin and I met back in college and never really stopped digging one another. So, after a brief intermission in the early 2000’s, we rendezvoused about a year and a half ago. He was living in Atlanta running a photography company in three states that he had started right out of college. I was up north in Connecticut working as the Associate Publisher of a Pitney Bowes small business magazine. After six months of bargain shopping for weekend flights to visit one another, I drew the short stick and moved to Georgia. Amidst the shock of co-habitation, we decided to throw another log on the fire and try working together as well. Sounds like lunacy to most, but for these two pigs, the poop couldn’t be finer.
We started our company, English Tavern, with two goals in mind.
First, explore the world and encourage others to do the same. One of the greatest offenses of the common traveler, beyond clipping finger nails on an airplane, is going on vacation to a new place and never taking the time to actually see it. We’re in agreement that drinks taste better when accompanied by a tiny umbrella, but our mission is to challenge you to throw that cocktail in a go-cup and VACATE YOUR ALL-INCLUSIVE. Not sure where to go? We’ll show you. Our promise is to photograph and write about every blog-worthy adventure we go on, restaurant we eat in and hotel we stay in as a resource for your destination wedding and general travel planning.
Second, by exposing the culture, music, heritage, cuisine and natural environment of the communities we’re fortunate enough to visit, our initial hope is to promote exploratory travel. Our hidden agenda, however, is the influence of ecotourism and sustainable travel that supports the communities we visit. Tourism is a powerful mechanism for community sustainability and for many of the most well traveled places on this planet; it is a necessity, not only for advancement, but for survival.
So, how does wedding photography fit in to this agenda? An estimated 350,000 couples said their “I do’s” at a destination wedding in 2007. An average of 63 guests per wedding accompanied those couples to their destination of choice. That translates into nearly 22.8 million travelers generated by the destination wedding industry last year alone. And with 71 million generation Y-ers on their way into the matrimony arena, with around a 20% chance of getting hitched away from home, this industry accounts for a hefty chunk of the tourism community.
There are several very important factors that make this hefty chunk of particular interest to us. First of all, these bridal tourists have a unique ability to influence the way a whole bunch of other people experience a destination, and would likely appreciate some suggestions to which they could offer their guests. With the already exhausting stress of planning a wedding, and the added responsibility of entertaining approximately 63 other people in a place that you’ve likely never been, a destination bride is certainly not in the seat of envy. Hopefully our blog reviews and photographs will help make the job of a destination bride a bit more tolerable.
Of course, weddings are also just a whole lot of fun to photograph. A bunch of people show up in the same place for the shared purpose of celebrating love, and family. It is arguably the best day of two people’s lives, and most importantly, cake is pretty much a guarantee. Two very simple words, when exchanged by a couple on their wedding day, momentarily transform into the two most powerful words every uttered. The ability to capture that powerful exchange of “I do” in a way that preserves the intensity of that moment for countless years to come is an honor.
It goes without saying that the wedding photography portion of this show is what makes things like eating and paying bills feasible for us. And, we use a percentage of everything we earn from photographing weddings to help support the sustainability of the communities within which we work. It’s a win-win.
We look forward to sharing our work with couples, travel enthusiasts and ecotourism junkies worldwide.
Cheers,
Cait and Justin