The Winner!!!

I am so excited to finally announce the winning couple for my Free Wedding Photography Contest!! After 12,656 votes, the final couple, The Cupcakes, managed to rake in 9,883 votes for themselves! Watching the results was unbelievable. I never imagined that my little contest would receive such a huge response. And I am super excited to photograph the Wedding of such an AMAZING couple on June 21, 2008!!!

Melissa & Steven!!

Aren’t they adorable?!?

They will receive the following Wedding Package:

• Engagement photo shoot
• one free digital negative for Wedding/newspaper announcement
• up to 6 hours of Wedding day coverage
• online proofing galleries with Pictage (www.pictage.com) for both the Engagement session and Wedding photos
• $100 discount on a flush-mount, coffee table style Wedding Book!

I gotta say…when I read the stories of all of the couples, my heart opened to each and every one of them. They all deserve to have the Wedding of their dreams, and it’s such a huge honor for me to be a part of that. But when I read Melissa and Steven’s story, they immediately won a special place in my heart after hearing of Steven’s deployment to Iraq, since my own husband was deployed there just a couple of years ago. I am so thrilled to be a part of one of the most important days in this young couple’s life!

To the two other couples, Samantha & Michael and Nikki & Craig:

Thank you so much for participating. I want to thank all of your friends and families for their votes, comments, and emails. I would still love to be a part of your day, and I will be contacting you soon with a special offer. Happy New Year to you all!!

To Melissa & Steven:

Congratulations!!! I’m so psyched to photograph your Wedding! Thank you so much for letting me into your lives, I can’t wait to get to know you both better.

To the friends and families of all of the couples:

Again, thanks for your votes, emails, an comments! If you want to continue to support these amazing couples, I do offer gift certificates starting at $100. This would certainly be a great start for any young couple. Contact me at chantal@chantalstonephotography for purchasing information.

One more thing…

The winner of my mini-contest, to name which was which was MELISSA! She was the first person to correctly guess who was who…

Cupcakes= Steve and Melissa
Brownies= Niki and Craig
Cookies= Samantha and Michael

So Melissa…in addition to having your Wedding photographed, you’ll also receive a FREE 8×10 print of your choice. Yay!!

The final contest results were as follows:

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

xoxox

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Please take a moment to take my tiny little survey… thanks!!
WEDDING PACKAGE SURVEY

Christmas Wrap-up and Updates!

I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas! Mine was absolutely wonderful. Tons of presents, tons of food, plenty of relaxation and loads of quality family time! This week between Christmas and New Year’s, is my absolute favorite. The stress from having to get ready for Christmas is gone, the kids are home, my husband has time off from work, the decorations are all still up. It’s completely stress free and I try to savor every minute of it!

I haven’t blogged in a week so I have some pics to show. Here are a few from the Westerville Christmas Spectacular. I photographed the show and we’ll be selling the prints. All profits will go towards the competition fundraising. The beautiful girl in the center of the first picture is my daughter :).

We baked a bunch of cookies, most of which are all gone now 🙂 Cherie and I also made a Gingerbread house which drove the kids crazy because they wanted to eat it. And we also made gingerbread men. Here’s Cherie cutting them out:

When I was a kid, growing up we always opened all of our presents on Christmas Eve. My mother is German, and we always did things the European way. It was a great tradition that I loved, but with my own kids, we do things the American way and open presents on Christmas morning. Part of the reason is that I need the extra time to wrap gifts! On Christmas Eve my kids can open one gift (usually pajamas). And that night, my mom spent the night and we stayed up until 3am wrapping gifts.

I took a few pictures of the mess after all of the presents were opened but it’s way too embarrassing to show a disaster like that on the internet!

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The FREE Wedding Photography contest is nearing its end. I think it’s still pretty early to announce a winner. The contest does not officially end until 3pm on Dec. 31st. So the voting will continue. But there is such a humongous lead, the trailing couples will have to recruit a few thousand votes to catch up! Here’s where it stands now, with over 12,000 votes:

I’m so excited! The feedback has been tremendous, I can’t thank everyone enough for participating! 48 hours left to vote!!

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I’ve been busy creating new Wedding packages and re-vamping my pricing structure for 2008. My goal is to offer couples a comprehensive package that would include all sorts of great things to make the investment totally worthwhile. I am also preparing some special offers for January and maybe another contest or two for the New Year so stay tuned!!

To help better serve my current and future clients, please take a moment to answer a few questions. Thank you!!

WEDDING PACKAGE SURVEY

Why Am I Blogging At 12:39am?

Because I had to let you know that my contest has just reached it’s 10,000th vote!

10,000?!?!? That’s totally insane!

I’m so excited….just 8 more days and I get to announce the winner!

Now, I need to wrap presents since my kids are in bed. 🙂

Merry Christmas!!!

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12:45am update:

I was just checking out a few of my favorite blogs before getting busy with the gift wrapping when I came across THIS POST on Becker’s blog.  PLEASE, take a moment to read, and if you find it within your heart to help a very sick little boy, you can make a donation.  You can also find more info HERE.

Help Heal Hunter!

I have 8673624158 things I should be doing right now, but…

I just wanted to publicly announce that if I don’t see this movie sometime within the next week or so, I am going to lay down and die:

Atonement:

And we can just go ahead an add it to my list of all-time favorite movies:

Pride & Prejudice
Cold Mountian
The Notebook

Do you sense a theme here? I’m a hopeless romantic!

Contest Update:

We just passed 8,000 total votes! I can’t believe it! Seriously, I figured there’d probably be several hundred votes, maybe 1,000 or so….but 8,000+??? I just love the enthusiasm and all of the participation. And I want to extend a big fat THANK YOU to all who have left comments here and sent me emails. I really appreciate all of your kind words. My biggest regret with this contest is making the voting deadline Dec. 31st. I can’t wait!! But anything can happen within the next 10 days, which only adds to the excitement!

The CUPCAKES still have a gigantic lead with 89% of the votes. My guess is that the two other couples are waiting until the last minute to release their arsenal of votes. Good Luck!!

Where did the time go?

I can’t believe Christmas is just five days away! Where did 2007 go? Time really flies, and the past several weeks have been a whirlwind for me.

Wednesday was my kids’ last day of school before Winter break. I’m really looking forward to spending time with them, sleeping in, baking cookies, watching movies while we all pile on the couch snuggled under blankets. My mom always jokes about how cuddly my family is….we’re always under a blanket!

Here’s a shot of my kids I took last Wednesday. Cherie had just lost her first tooth!

Aside from the large amounts of quality family time I plan on having, I do have some other things I plan to accomplish. I’m going to put together a sample book from my 2007 photo shoots. I’m really excited about that…kind of like a yearbook for my first year in business (first 6 months actually). I also have some biz-related work to finish up…to be ready for the 2008 Wedding season. I’m so excited for next year, I have some really awesome Weddings already booked and I’m looking forward to booking more in the next few months!

I also have a few things I plan to blog within the next week. I can’t wait to share some more of the photos I took at the Westerville Holiday Spectacular. And I also plan on posting some of my favorite photos from the past year that never made it to either this blog, or my Photoblog.

In other news…

The Free Wedding Photography contest is going well. I can’t express in words how amazed I am at the amount of votes that have come in so far. There have been over 2,000 votes in the past 24 hours alone! So since I’ve received several requests for an update, here is where it stands as of 1:00am:

Cupcakes 80%
Brownies 18%
Cookies 3%

(I realize that equals 101, but that’s what the poll results say….we’re talking percentages here.)

Anyway, obviously there’s still quite an enormous gap between the couples, but remember, we still have 11 days left of voting. ANYTHING can happen.

🙂

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UPDATE 1:50pm, Thursday:

Cupcakes     90.59%
Brownies        8.31%
Cookies              1.1%

Unbelievable!!   There were almost 3,000 votes so far today already.  Honestly, when this contest started, I didn’t even think we’d get 3,000 votes during the entire voting period!  This is really exciting!!

Contest Update #3: Desserts & A Mini-Contest

Ok, so in the interest of fairness, but also fun, I made the decision to keep the results of the Free Wedding Photography under wraps.  And it’s so hard because what is going on right now with this voting is truly amazing. Just since this afternoon, the contest has taken a dramatic turn.

Try to follow me.  I’m sticking to my guns and keeping the results anonymous.  But I need to refer to them so I have given each couple a completely RANDOM nickname.  These are in no particular order and shed no light upon their identity.  So for the sake of discussion, we’ll call each couple the Cupcakes, the Cookies, and the Brownies (my favorite desserts~~~ sweet, huh?)

So…..when the voting first started the Cookies were in the lead.  Then in just a few hours, the Brownies took over, and were the leading couple in each of the previous updates I had posted.   But in just a matter of a few hours this afternoon, the Cupcakes have stolen first place and are now leading by a huge margin.  I couldn’t believe it when I checked on the stats…the amount of votes that came in for all three couples was just astounding!  As of right now, Team Cupcake is leading by A LOT!

This is still very much anyone’s game. Anything can happen within the next 13 days.  If there are any other big changes I’ll be sure to post!

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Can you match the couples with the desserts?  Try to guess and leave your answers in the comment section of THIS post.   Whoever leaves the FIRST correct answer will WIN, but I won’t announce it until after contest voting period is over. 

The prize:  If you are a friend or family member of the winning couple, then you can have a FREE 8×10 print of your choice from their wedding gallery.  If you are not connected to the winning couple, then you can have a free 8×12 print of your choice from my Fine Art gallery that will be posted sometime within the next two weeks!