Hello friends!

Welcome to the new adventures of Firefly Haven! Well, more like join us for this amazing ride that we want to invite you to take with us as we evolve into something grand. In this article, you will find some reminiscing on the blessings we sowed last year and, more importantly, what we are dreaming of growing in the future!

SOW THE SEEDS

2023 was a great year for us as we built our greenhouse, met lots of amazing people, and kept things flexible as we got our feet under us.

Built the greenhouse studio

The greenhouse has quickly become our third baby. We have put lots of love, sweat, and tears into making it a great place to be shared with others, and man…all the positive feedback we keep getting just warms the soul.

I will say that the purpose it was built for and where it has landed is not remotely the same, but a blessing of growth nonetheless. We originally built this intending to grow plants in it, but when it hit 120 degrees inside it shortly after it was completed in the summer, we decided that plants were not for us.

Instead, we decided to open it up so that its beauty could fill the hearts and calm the minds of others as our property does for us.

Learn more about why we chose a greenhouse and how we came up with the business idea here.

From feedback to features

Even though we built a photo studio for photographers, we are not photographers ourselves and do not plan to become them. We do have degrees in web and graphic design though, which did touch on some basics of photography, so we have taken it to heart to get as much feedback as fast as possible so we can improve in an industry that we don’t know too well.

In the search for feedback, we opened with a month of only tours so we could throw ideas and see if they were even useful for photographers.

We continue this by greeting and saying goodbye to each renter. This has been a great way to get to know everyone who has come from far and wide (still surprising to see the distances) and make sure we continue to provide a great experience for everyone.

This time with our past clients has helped us be more aware of the position of the sun in the sky during different parts of the year, be more aware of how the building’s temperature fluctuates, and make changes to improve the space, such as our addition of the curtains to soften the winter suns harsh shadows.

WATCHING IT GROW

We have planted the seeds of many great ideas and are now going to take time this year to make them grow!

We have decided that for the next year, we plan to focus on growing our reputation among photographers and couples looking to have a small or micro wedding.

With that said, here are some of the seeds we are going to focus on growing this year:

• Photographers

  • Sets
    • We know that you need to treat interest, promote, and plan when it comes to mini-sessions and that takes time. With that in mind, we are working to plan our sets and have the assets for you to promote sessions well in advance of them being installed.On top of that, we are keeping an eye out for unique opportunities to partner with vendors to give you opportunities to work with people you wouldn’t normally be able to work with.
    • As a reminder, if you subscribe to our newsletter you get early access to all of your special events!
  • Styled shoots or content days
    • A luxury that we are aware of is that we are first a photo studio and second a wedding venue. That means that we want to do lots of things to help photographers, and with that, we would love to offer unique themes for shoot days to help create diversity in portfolios. These could be high tea, heavily themed parties, pop-culture-inspired, high fashion, and much more. We have several ideas, but would love to hear more!
    • If you have a dream shoot you would like to photograph or you have one you would like to plan with us, please reach out here and share your thoughts!
  • Workshops
    • If you are not aware yet, we are not photographers. We have had a little training in the art of photography in college, but would not even hint that we are photographers. But, because we enjoy this community and the people in it, we want to become a resource for photographers in our community and help everyone’s business grow!
    • We are in the works of putting together an agenda to take effect over the summer where we partner with others to highlight and share knowledge on topics they are experienced in while working on hands-on activities to expand your portfolio and grow your business. Things we would love to cover this year are photography business basics, building a website that converts, marketing tactics and personalizing them to your business, covering the bases when protecting yourself and your business, low light photography, posting different types of clients, and much more!
    • If you have a passion for teaching and photography, we would love to work with you! And if you are interested in learning something new or expanding upon what you already know, we would love to have you out for one of our workshops. Either way, visit here and share with us your interest(s) so we can become the new tool in your tool belt.
  • Blog
    • On top of in-person workshops, we will be creating content to expand upon the teachings of the workshops, keep everyone updated on the happenings at the greenhouse, and highlight the great work created on our property.

• Couples

  • Weddings
    • Beyond photography, we are opening up the property to ceremony-only micro weddings. We estimate our parking lot to only be able to handle enough cars for about 30 guests to come, so that is where we set our max. If someone wants to get married inside the greenhouse it would be a max of 12 seated guests.
    • Right now we are only providing the chairs and a few decorations, but plan to build a vendor list and an all-inclusive package that contains a cocktail hour later this year.
    • If you or someone you know would like to chat with us about being a part of our vendor list or our all-inclusive offerings, feel free to email us directly and we can chat!
  • Blog
    • Because we have been doing wedding stationery for 7 years now, we have a lot of contacts who could share their expertise, besides our knowledge, and focus it on micro weddings or elopements.

In the end, we have had a lot of fun learning and meeting new people over the past few months. As we begin the new year we have lots of plans to make new friends and grow the local photography community as much as we can.

Please, if anything has piqued your interest from what I said above, feel free to follow the links provided or hit us up on social media or through email, and Chelsea or I will be there to chat!