Venema Pictures had just refreshed their own brand, and their website hadn't caught up. We built the site that shows the quality of their work, speaks to the luxury couples they film, and makes enquiring feel like the start of the story.
A new brand, and a website that had to rise to meet it.
Venema Pictures have been filming and photographing weddings since 2011, for couples from all over the world who marry in Bali and Jakarta. In 2024 they rebranded themselves: a new logo, a palette of Dark Sienna and Desert Sand, and a clearer sense of the luxury market they serve.
Their website was a WordPress theme that had been added to for years. It said the right words (“artistry”, “luxury”, “living time capsules”), but the work itself was split across separate film and photo menus, and the path to enquire was a long form on a separate page.
The brief was to close the gap between how good Venema's work is and how their website made it feel: show the films and photographs at their best, speak to the couples planning a destination wedding, and make the first message easy to send.
From a theme that described the work to a site that shows it.
The old home page opened on a photo slideshow, then explained Venema's approach in a few paragraphs of centred text. The words were lovely; the page asked visitors to imagine the films rather than watch them.
Now the first thing anyone sees is a Venema film, playing full screen, under the studio's own script headline: “We Craft Your Remembrance.” A Play Showreel button sits above it, and the press that has featured their weddings sits just below.
Home. Before: the Internet Archive, late 2024, just below the old slideshow (its photos were never archived). After: the live site.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| First screen | A photo slideshow, then centred paragraphs about the approach. | A full-screen Venema film, the script headline and Play Showreel. |
| Portfolio | Four menus that kept films and photos apart. | Four collections for the couples they serve (International, Elopement, Ethnic, Couple Session) and 25 wedding stories pairing film and photo. |
| Luxury proof | Three short written testimonials. | “As featured on” Junebug Weddings, Style Me Pretty, The Bride Dept and Bridestory, and named couples and venues. |
| Enquiring | A separate contact page with a long form, including a nationality list of about 250 countries. | A letter on the home page, “Dear Venema Pictures, my name is…”, and WhatsApp messages pre-filled with date, venue and photo or film. |
| Guides | A Guides menu and two guide teasers that didn't go anywhere yet. | A working Blogs section. |
| Running it | WordPress with a page builder and a stack of plugins. | Next.js with a Strapi content system: the team adds weddings, galleries and posts themselves. |
Six weeks from first design to a site ready to launch.
Venema came to us with their new identity already in hand, so the design started from their own logo, colours and the warmth of their films. We set a type system around it: an elegant display face for headlines, Manrope for reading, and a script for the moments that should feel handwritten.
We gathered references, wireframed the home page, a wedding story and the enquiry, and then designed in ten days, with a round of revisions before development began. The build took four weeks: a fast Next.js front end, and a Strapi system behind it so Venema's team can publish every new wedding without us.
Wireframe
Design
Wireframe
Design
Every wedding, told as one story.
Couples don't choose a wedding studio from a grid of thumbnails. They choose it from a wedding that feels like theirs. So every wedding is now its own page: the couple, the venue, the films and the photographs together, then the next couple's story.
Above them, four collections match the couples Venema actually serves: international weddings, elopements, ethnic ceremonies and couple sessions. A visitor can find a wedding like the one they're planning in a click, and the gallery carries more than two hundred photographs for anyone who wants to keep looking.
Collections
A wedding story
Enquiring feels like writing to them.
The old enquiry was a form on a separate page. The new one sits on the home page and reads like a letter: “Dear Venema Pictures, my name is…, I'm planning a… in… on…”. Couples fill in the blanks of a sentence instead of a database, and Venema receives every detail they need to reply properly.
For couples who'd rather message, every WhatsApp link opens with the date, the venue and photo or film already written in. Bali and Jakarta each have their own line, overseas couples have WeChat, and the footer says when to expect a reply.
The website finally looks as good as the films.
Venema's site now carries the luxury their brand promised: their films first, the press that features them, and every wedding told in full. Since launch, visitors have grown 92 times over and direct enquiries more than five times.
Behind it, Venema's own team publishes every new wedding, gallery and post through the content system we built, so the site keeps growing with the studio.
You've built something worth showing off. Let's build the site that finally shows it.
