Handy Tips

We get a lot of folk who know they have something a bit special to send our way, but also know we receive, download and review about 3000 real weddings each year, and would therefore like to know how you stand out from the crowd and ensure your submission is accepted. So with that in mind here are a few tips, pointers and observations that will improve the chances of your wedding being featured on Hello May.

PACKAGING

Package up your submission as per our submission guidelines. We don’t ask for much here at Hello May, and kindly request you work with us by ensuring you follow the simple steps outlined here.

If we have to hunt you down for additional information, or you send through too small an edit your submission can and will be put on the back burner until we have time to devote to it, which could take months, or we may never get around to chasing you up.

If your wedding doesn’t make the cut, don’t fret, the silver lining is it will already be packaged up and ready to submit to other blogs. And remember, just because your submission is unsuccessful it doesn’t mean we don’t love your work, it simply might mean we’re over saturated with one type of wedding and looking for something a little different at that particular time. You can find out a little more about this on our Q+A page.

PHOTO EDITING

We’re story tellers just like you guys. We won’t use every photo you give us but in order for us to photo edit, design and write a strong real wedding feature packed with value for our readers we need to be given the whole story. Essentially we like to see everything from the getting ready photos right through to the moment last drinks are called and grandma is the only one left on the dance floor.

Having said that a submission where 150 of the images are made up of getting ready photos and guests on the dance floor isn’t much good to us either, or of any benefit to our readers. By all means include these images, as they help set the tone and vibe of the day, but be mindful they don’t take up the bulk of your submission.

Your final edit should be made up of a good mix of people and detail photos. The bride, her bridesmaids, the groom and his groomsmen. Along with the portrait session we want to see close up shots of the invitations, the cake, the place cards, rings and flowers along with bigger picture stuff like the venue and overall styling of the ceremony and reception, not to mention the bride and groom enjoying these surroundings with their family and friends.

We don’t just want to see the one shot of the cake you deem suitable to give us either. We want to see all 10 shots you took of the cake. The close ups, the verticals, the horizontals… the more you give us to work with the more likely your feature will end up in print.

FILL OUT THE Q+A AND CREDITS LIST CORRECTLY

Like we said above, if we have to hunt you down for additional information, it can really slow us down on the march. Once a submission is accepted please ensure that before submitting the Q+A and credits list you have read it carefully, acknowledged our strict exclusivity policies and filled out all of the required fields.

Suppling the business name and website for each vendor involved in the planning and  execution of the day.
If its an Etsy or eBay vendor please be sure to provide a link to their specific store.
Put a bit of time and effort into your Q+A as the more info we have, the better. You don’t  have to write us a novel, but one or two sentence answers don’t help us much either. One or two  short paragraphs for each question should do the trick.
Ensure you list the suburb, city and state your wedding took place at the top of the page. This allows us to ensure that we are covering all areas of Australia. if we get a wedding from South Australia or Tasmania, we are more likely to look at it in greater depth because we may be lacking in content for those areas.

EDITING STYLE

We carefully curate your images down to about 75 – 100 in order for us to share your story with our readers in a way we know will resonate best with them.

We love images that fall in the same photographic style rather than a mix of styles. We also like images that fall in the same colour story. Nothing makes us cringe more than a submission littered with random sepia toned images or really desaturated (or over saturated) images. It makes much more of an impact on-line if the images flow beautifully together.

We like images that are beautifully lit and true to life skin tones is paramount! We appreciate that there are many different types of photographic styles, but here at Hello May we tend to gravitate more towards photographs that are shot in a magazine or documentary style.

BE A NICE HUMAN BEING

It makes our day when we get a nice email from a vendor or bride, someone who is clearly approachable and easy to work with and sounds like the kind of human we’d like to enjoy a cider with at the pub one lazy Sunday afternoon. These are the vendors we feature on a regular basis.

On the flip side, it totally bums us out when a vendor is particularly rude to us after their submission has been declined, or if it has taken us a little while to reply to their email. Please try and remember we are dealing with hundreds and hundreds of emails a day whilst balancing the needs of both our readers and vendors alike. To find out more about why it can take us a few weeks to reply sometimes visit our Q+A page.

Rest assured we remember those that are all round nice human beings and fun to work with and are therefore more inclined to reach out to them for content calls in the future.

READ OUR BLOG. SERIOUSLY

Read our blog. It sounds like a simple request but you would be amazed at the amount of submissions we get where it is painstakingly obvious that a submitter has not familiarised themselves with the kind of content we like to feature here at Hello May.

Don’t send in a wedding that is far from the quality of the weddings that we publish, slap together a bunch of weddings from the previous season and hope that one of them catches our attention or submit your leftovers after sending your faves elsewhere.

We want to know that you have carefully selected a wedding for publication on Hello May because you know that it’s pretty darn special and something our readers will really get a kick out of, not to mention draw a myriad of inspiration from.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Sure we love to feature a beautifully elegant wedding here at Hello May but we see so many every day they can all start to look the same after a while. If there is a unique angle, it’s sure to catch our attention. We especially love seeing…

Brides in short, coloured, vintage or sequinned (read: non-traditional) bridal gowns
Brides in designer gowns, ie: not another strapless off-the-rack number.
Weddings held in mind blowingly unique or jaw droppingly beautiful locations
Weddings held in backyards and on family properties
Weddings that really encapsulate a particular city
Weddings with lots of DIY
Weddings with big budget styling
Receptions with simple but awesomely executed details
Receptions with a tightly executed theme whether it’s Gatsby glamour or a Mexican fiesta!

By all means the above are not hard and fast rules, we love featuring a diverse mix of weddings from all sexes, religions, styles and corners of Australia and look forward to your submission knocking our socks off!

WE ARE HERE FOR YOU

Please remember our sole reason for existence is to promote and support you, whilst providing a boat load of unique and exclusive content to our readers. We want you to submit weddings that get a ton of coverage and are pinned, shared and tweeted a thousand times over. So the more you stick to these rules, and our submission guidelines, the better for all.