I have been capturing wedding for several years now and bridal portraits are often looked over by many as “I don’t need those” or “There is no point in these pictures” or “Why do I want to spend extra money on several vendors”. Well, I have had several brides understand why they are important.
Bridal portraits are a trial-run of how you will look on your wedding day. Your wedding day photos will hang on the walls in your house and are the visual memory of the most important day of your life. Why would you not want everything perfect in them? When you set up bridal portraits you need to contract the same vendors that will be performing the services on your wedding day. The stylist that will be doing your hair, the make-up artist that will apply your make-up and the florist that will be crafting your bouquet. Too often I have had brides upset with one of the three.
Examples:
Bride 1 -
I shot her wedding several years ago and she always sticks out in my mind as to why bridals are so important. She had bridals taken and at that point, she hadn’t completely decided on the type of flowers she wanted for her bouquet. She went to the store and purchased flowers and made herself three bouquets to see what she liked best. I shot several images with the different bouquets. She ended up wanting a combination of the flowers. On her wedding day, her florist showed up with a bouquet of a single flower that was not the correct color and didn’t have the other flowers in the bouquet. Having a bride look at her bouquet and break down in tears is not something you want to see on a wedding day.
Bride 2 -
She scheduled bridals and made her appointments. She came to the studio after her hair and make-up and hated it!! She also had her florist make a small bouquet for her pictures since she wanted a cascading bouquet for her wedding. Now, the flowers she chose were amazing and the bridesmaid’s bouquets looked perfect, however, the bride’s was entirely too big for her frame and had such a small handle, that she couldn’t even hold it. We had to add extra support for her to make it down the aisle with it.
Bride 3 -
She said one of the common phrases above and declined bridals. On her wedding day, she was an hour late to the church because of not being happy with her hair. They had to fix it and it took awhile for it to be prefect! She was very agitated with running late and didn’t really get to enjoy herself before the ceremony.
I’m not saying anything bad about these type of vendors because I know several that are wonderful to work with. When it’s such an important day and you want everything “picture perfect”, not every person will have the same vision as you do. You see yourself every day and know what you like and what you don’t. I can say that in the first two situations, that the bouquet Bride 1 got was pretty and the hair of Bride 2, I thought looked good. BUT it doesn’t matter what I think as the photographer. It’s going to be what the bride thinks about how she looks in her pictures.
Even my own bridal’s, I changed my hair and flowers for the wedding day. I decided to have my hair up and when I looked at the pictures, I didn’t like how I looked with it all up. I had my florist make a bouquet that I saw in a magazine which consisted of red and yellow flowers. I didn’t like the look of the yellow so I changed them to white and was much happier with white.
I’m also not trying to say this to get people to spend more money on their pictures. If a bride doesn’t want them and completely trust her vendors, I still tell them to do a trial run with hair and make-up and have someone take a few pictures to make sure it’s what you want. These three vendors have all told me that once they apply a bride’s make-up or style her hair or create the bouquet, it’s much more easy to do it a second time and typically quicker than the first. As the photographer, it’s nice to see you in your dress and know the details (hair, make-up, flowers, veil, train length, etc) to help make your photographs better.
All vendors want a happy bride and not one in tears unless they are tears of joy!
. If you meet with a photographer and you think they are entirely too expensive but you love their photos, just ask about deals or discounts they may have. If you know you can only afford $1,000 toward photography, tell them and see what they can do for your budget. This is just one item that you certainly don’t want to regret afterwards. Explain your style and any shots you want to complete the perfect wedding!
