Do I Need Wedding Prep Photos?
Occasionally couples will ask us, “do I need bridal prep photos?” Often this is because they don’t have a full understanding of what wedding prep is and how we document it. Do you need old school boring photos of all of the bridesmaids lined up in front of the fire place in their matching P.J’s? Probably not! Do you need fake staged photos of your make-up artist holding a brush to your face long after your make-up application has been completed, probably not!
However in the intricate tapestry of a wedding day, the moments leading up to the ceremony itself are woven with anticipation, emotion, and intimate interactions. Capturing getting ready through photography can not only enriches the narrative of your wedding gallery, helping to tell the full story of your big day but can also preserves memories that might otherwise fade with time.
The Best Reasons To Have
Wedding Prep Photos
Highlighting Personal Details
From the amazing dress, the beautiful wedding bouquets, to heirloom jewellery, personalised vows or even your wedding day scent, preparation photos can document the all of the awesome details that reflect your personal style and theme of your wedding day.
These photos will serve as a visual archive of all the elements that make your wedding uniquely yours. You spent months planning and choosing all of these elements and putting them together so it’s important to have a visual record.
Preserving Authentic Emotions
The hours leading up to the ceremony are always filled with genuine joy, palpable excitement, nervousness, and deeply heartfelt interactions between you and your family and friends. Documenting these precious moments provides a candid glimpse into the emotional landscape of your wedding day.
When your Dad see’s you in your dress for the time, enjoying a glass of bubbly with your bridesmaids, sharing a moment with your kids or pets, all of these authentic real moments on a wedding day are important and documenting them should be too.
Building a Relationship With Your Wedding Photographer
Having your photographer present during preps helps fosters a comfortable environment, helping you get used to the camera's presence. This rapport often results in more natural and relaxed photographs throughout the rest of the day.
Unless you have had an engagement session before your wedding, it is likely that you won’t have met your wedding photographer before they turn up on the day. A good wedding photographer will always ask lots of thoughtful questions before your wedding, but documenting bridal prep, will give them the invaluable opportunity to observe which relationships are most important to you and your partner. Later on in the day, when things are happening really fast and emotions are running high, they will then know exactly who to look out for, ensuring that the moments you share with your most important people are captured. Your wedding is fundamentally about the two of you and the love you share, but one of our absolute favourite things to do as photographers is to observe and capture the interactions between you and your most important people. Sometimes that can be the tender moments between the bride and her mum, the granny who steals the show or even just some fun time with your nephews and nieces.
The more we know about your unique story and the people and things that hold significant importance to you, the better we can craft and tell your narrative. Wedding prep is truly the time of day, when we gain a deeper understanding of much of it. Prep is also an important opportunity for your photographer to begin establishing a relationship with all the wonderful people around you as well especially if they are in any way nervous about being photographed.
How We Shoot Wedding Prep
Every wedding photographer in Northern Ireland will have a different approach to shooting bridal prep. for us we will alter our approach depending on the couple. If we have an excited full of life couple we will be very much involved in everything that is going on, if we have a more introverted bride and groom, we will be as unobtrusive as possible.
We normally arrive with the bride after the hair stylist and make-up artist has had time to get set up and start their work. Usually the bride’s hair and make-up application get’s left to last so that she is looking absolutely perfect before leaving for the ceremony. So while the bridesmaids are getting ready we photograph the details. This usually includes, the dress, the flowers, the brides jewellery, wedding invitations, order of service and sometimes the vows. This is also a great time for us to grab a photo of the wedding rings.
While doing this we also keep an out for any moments happening between the bride and everyone else who is there. By the time we are finished with wedding details the bride is usually having her hair and make-up done, and we will grab some photos from that while also capturing all of the candid moments that are happening as well. For us we very much prefer a candid approach to getting ready rather than staging every photo.
Usually then everyone starts to get dressed, we like to get some photos of the bride in her dress and sometimes there will be a first look with her Dad or he bridesmaids to capture as well. Sometimes if the couple are getting ready from the same location we will go grab some time with the groom and groomsmen as well. Or if there is time to do so we will leave and stop in with the groom before the ceremony. The groom getting ready always takes a lot less time, as their is usually less people with them and far less details to photograph. Often the groom getting ready is a 15-20 minute job, we always love to do it when the time is available, just like it is with the bride it allows us to build relationships for the day ahead.
The Advantages Of 2 Wedding Photographers for Bridal Prep
We are a husband and wife team of wedding photographers. Having both of us with you for bridal prep makes a huge difference to what we are able to document and how quickly we can do it. Having 2 wedding photographers means that we don’t have to enlist the help of bridesmaids etc. to move things around when shooting the details. It also means that we don’t miss any meaningful moments when shooting the details or when concentrating on shooting the brides hair styling and make-up application.
You get two distinct and invaluable points of view from the morning of your wedding day. For instance, while one of us captures Dad’s heartfelt reaction to seeing you in your beautiful dress for the very first time, the other can remain focused solely on you, allowing you to enjoy those precious moments. Overall, the most significant advantage of our approach is that we can authentically capture all of the real, unscripted moments shared between you, your family, and your friends. This means we won’t need to resort to asking you to stage everything, or even worse, asking you to fake a moment that was missed, which is something that can happen with photographers who work alone.
Putting Couples At Ease
We are highly experienced wedding photographers and have been capturing beautiful moments at weddings since 2014. Over the years, we have had the privilege of shooting hundreds of weddings and have pretty much seen it all when it comes to various wedding styles and traditions. Our extensive portfolio includes every single type of wedding you can think of, as we have worked closely with couples from all over the globe.
This wealth of experience has equipped us to handle any situation that may arise on a wedding day, and we have become experts at helping to put our couples at ease. Our goal is to ensure that they enjoy a stress-free wedding day, particularly regarding the photography aspect of their celebration.
Why do some couples not want to have getting ready photos?
Insecurity
In our experience there is usually a reason why some couples do not want getting ready photographs. The most common reason especially with brides is because of insecurity or nervousness about being photographed. Most couples will want their wedding ceremony photographed but when it comes to getting ready they can feel awkward about having real raw photographs taken of them. Brides especially can get concerned about being photographed without a full face of make-up and their hair not sitting perfectly. They don’t always realise how beautiful these images can be!
Budget
Another reason is because of budget. Sometimes couples think that it may be cheaper to exclude getting ready photographs, not realising that usually this will make no difference to the overall cost. It is not like your wedding photographer can go shoot another wedding, because they don’t have to shoot you getting ready.
Friends having a bad experience
Occasionally it is because they have been told about a bad experience that their family member or friend had on their wedding day. We hate to hear negative stories about any wedding photographer as often people then tar us all with the same brush, but not all wedding photographers do things in the same way. We have had bridesmaids and guests tell us that they had a poor experience from their photographer or videographer when getting ready on their own wedding day. It is usually because the photographer did something that stressed them out. They turned up very late, they weren’t nice to all of the people that were there or that they “ruined” the wedding day morning taking too many heavily staged photographs which meant they didn’t have time to enjoy getting ready.
Trust your wedding photographer
All of the reasons we have mentioned as to why some couples don’t want getting ready can be resolved by finding the right wedding photographer for you and trusting them. We always do everything we can to try and elevate any insecurities our couples have, we never turn up late and we always try to capture real moments from getting ready instead of staging photographs.
When you are choosing your wedding photographer look for someone whose style really resonates with you. Look through their online portfolio at how they normally photograph getting ready, if that speaks to you that is the photographer for you. Once you have booked them listen to their advice on how to get the most from your getting ready photographs. They should offer advice on the best location for light, what details they want to shoot and if there is anything over and above that you would like to include.
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