Things Every Bride Should Know – A Photographer’s Perspective

Another feature I wanted to create on my blog for you is a series of articles on things I think every bride should know or consider when making wedding day decisions. Everything I write about today and in future articles will be from the only perspective I have – that of the wedding photographer (and one-time bride). I realize that my articles could seem self-serving – something created to make my job easier. You know what, that could be partly the case. But my motivation for writing these is all the wonderful brides I’ve already had the pleasure of working with and all those I hope to be blessed to work with in the future. Wedding planning is not an easy process. There are so many details – things I can’t even begin to cover in my little photography blog. But what I hope to do is ease some of your worries/stress by providing you with tools and knowledge to help you make your decisions and weed through some of the details to make your day better.

I can’t tell you how many times a bride I’m working with has said to me “Thank you! I never thought of that!”. After hearing that a few times, I realized – I attend more weddings in one year than most people do in their life. And I LOVE it! That aside, though, being around weddings all the time gives me knowledge and insight that I wish I had when I was planning my own wedding.

When I got married, rather, when I set out to plan our wedding, I remember thinking – I’m marrying my BEST friend, this is going to be fun! We are getting married! We are going to have the best night of our lives and nothing is going to get in the way of that. Then reality hit. There were SO many more details and options for those details than I ever knew existed. I quickly realized I was going to have to work at it if I was going to have the wedding I had always dreamed of (and let’s be honest, though we are getting married to the best man in the world – it’s really about the wedding us girls have always dreamed of. I’m fairly certain most men didn’t play Wedding Day with dandelions in their backyards every summer.) Hard work doesn’t always equal fun. There. I said it. Planning a wedding isn’t always fun. But it shouldn’t have to be that way. I was overwhelmed and I didn’t know where to begin.

I can’t tell you where to begin – though I CAN suggest you start with an approximate date and get your venue and date booked before moving forward with your other decisions. I’ve started reviewing venues as part of the other series of articles I’m doing here. Maybe they can help you – maybe not, but I hope they can! However, that’s not the focus of this series.

What I want to do here is put the focus on photography. It should come as no surprise that I think photography is the single most important aspect of your wedding day. I have always thought that. The church/ceremony location sets the level of spirituality of the day. The venue sets the mood and formality of the celebration. The flowers add elegance and personal touch to go along with the color and style choice for your dress, his tux (or suit or jeans!) and the attendant’s outfits. But the photography (and arguably videography – but that’s another discussion) preserves those moments, those details, those feelings for you and your family – forever.

Now that you know where I am coming from and what my intentions are, I want to leave you with a wish for a very happy new year and a hope that your wedding planning goes well. And is fun.

Oh, and what is a photographer’s blog without an image?! Here is one of my favorites from 2009. (Ok, full disclosure on this, it literally took me 2 hours to pick just one. And I changed my mind 30 times. So I repeat – this is ONE of my 100s of favorites from this year. Maybe I should just make an album of all my favorites and share that? Hmmm)