Bridal Prep: How to Get Ready on Your Wedding Morning

DO YOU WANT THE BEST POSSIBLE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE BRIDE GETTING READY?

The morning of most weddings is one of the least structured parts of the day, as it should be. Most brides will want as relaxed a morning as possible so that they can enjoy their hair and make-up applications and share a few laughs with their bridesmaids. As wedding photographers, we always want to create the best possible photographs for our clients so we thought it might be useful for us to share some tips on how to get the very most from this part of the wedding day while still ensuring that the wedding morning isn’t too structured. On every wedding morning we pretty much just shoot what is happening in a documentary style so it’s also important for us as well, that our brides are relaxed, happy and enjoying that part of the day.

wedding tips bride getting ready bride relaxed and happy

PREPARE THE ROOM

If you are getting ready as a lot of brides do at their Mum and Dads homes or in your own home, have a think about the room you are going to use for your hair and make-up applications. The vast majority of people’s homes have clutter. If it’s in the room, it will be in the shot! A quick 5 minutes spent removing unnecessary clutter the night before can have a dramatic impact on your photographs from this part of the wedding day. If there is clutter in the room, your wedding photographer will have to find a way of avoiding that which may mean they can only shoot from certain areas of the room to exclude this or it may mean that they will have to shoot very tight by getting very close to you. While it’s always good to get a few tight shots, you don’t want all of the photographs from getting ready to be like that, you also don’t want all of your photographs looking very similar because your wedding photographer was only able to shoot from one position in the room. It’s also important to create some space for your hair dresser and make-up artists to put the products they will be using.

The same thing applies if you are getting ready from a hotel room. While a hotel room won’t have the same clutter that a home will have, it’s a good idea to have a quick tidy up either the night before or early in the morning, before your hairdresser, make-up artist and wedding photographer arrive. Hide your suitcase out of the way, ask the hotel staff to remove the breakfast dishes and stash away the empty bottle of Prosecco and glasses from the night before.

BAN THE RING LIGHT

A lot of make-up artists use a ring light and we know from chatting to lots of them that there are many different reasons for this. For most it is just because that is how they were trained. A ring light produces extremely harsh hard light. Many make-up artists believe that this can help them pick up small details on your face. Some make-up artists also just use a ring light for no other reason than they believe that it makes them look more professional to their clients. Ring lights were originally designed for macro photography as the harsh light is a good fit for that before being adopted by the beauty industry. However, having worked with hundreds of different make-up artists, the very best one’s we have always found use only natural light during the make-up application. This is because of the kelvin range or temperature of colour that a ring light produces is very warm and while the manufacturers often claim that the colour can be adjusted to match daylight, they always produce an orange tint regardless of adjustment. This is why the very best make-up artists will not use them as when you then step out into natural light your make-up will be matched against that orange warm light used during the application rather than natural light as it should be.

The bad colours produced by a ring light will affect your photographs as well. While we can correct this in post-production to a certain extent it is not possible to remove this completely. Most room’s will have several different sources of light all with different temperatures, you will have natural window light, the temperature of any lights in the room that are being used which can be a mixture of fluorescent and halide lighting and adding a ring light to this as well can make for difficult lighting conditions which will impact on your photographs.

ban the ring light tips for bride getting ready

Another huge issue with ring lights in terms of photographs of people is the harsh light that they produce. Because the light is so harsh any flaws in your skin are magnified immensely, details that would not normally be seen in your photographs will be very visible. Photographers do not use macro lenses for portraits even though they are very sharp for the same reason, they produce too much detail. The most important thing in photography in ensuring beautiful photographs is having beautiful light to use. The very best light in every room is produced by the windows. Having your make-up artist apply your make-up while facing a window and using natural light is the best way to get beautiful photographs of your make-up application as well as ensuring that your make-up does not have an orange tint to match a ring light.

Another problem with ring lights been used is that it can be difficult to keep them out of the shot depending on the layout of the room and they can often be an unwanted distraction in photographs. They will generally need to be connected to the mains as well which will mean an unsightly cable running across the floor, which can be difficult to hide.

Ring lights are made up of small L.E.D lights. This thankfully does not affect us, but for some photographers depending on the equipment they use any L.E.D lighting can be an issue. Some cameras have real problems with an issue known as banding under L.E.D lighting conditions. This is due to how L.E.D lights pulse and the use of a ring light could potentially mean than many photographs taken are unusable. Luckily for us all of the cameras we use can compensate for this by using Anti-Flicker technology, this can still sometimes even for us though cause some problems as the cameras shutter can lag (be much slower) as part of the Anti-Flicker technology meaning some moments can pass before we can get the shot.

BE PREPARED

As well as photographing all the ladies getting ready when we arrive on every wedding morning, we want to photograph the dresses, the shoes, the flowers, the jewellery and any other little bits and pieces related to the wedding. Other things we might like to photograph are a copy of your wedding invitation or save the date cards.

Wedding tips bride getting ready the wedding dress

We always ask our clients were possible to have all of these items in one location, this means that when we arrive, we can just get to work with these, without having to disturb the bride to find things. To help things go smoothly and with as little hassle on the morning of the wedding if you need to steam or iron dresses or polish shoes etc. it is best to do that the night before so that everything is ready to go which means you have more time to have fun and drink Prosecco. If you want a photograph of all of your dresses together for symmetry try and put them all on matching clothes hangers.

TIME MANAGEMENT

The wedding timeline is the probably the most important part of every wedding, while it might make the day feel more structured having a well put together wedding timeline actually ensures a much more relaxed and stress-free day. Couples often under estimate how long various parts of the day will take and this is especially true for the bride getting ready. While the old school “bride being fashionable late” still rings true today this can be avoided easily by having a more realistic wedding timeline. Things can sometimes go wrong, make-up artists and hairdressers can get caught in traffic on their way to you or sleep in and be late. Sometimes the hair and make-up applications can take longer than expected. It is always sensible to allow for a little extra time than is actually needed just in case.

A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS

If you have read through all of this and are thinking that it all sounds a little bit daunting and will create extra hassle for you on the lead up to your wedding do not forget it is not all on you to put these things in place. While of course it is important that you and your bridesmaids enjoy the lead up to the wedding as much as possible, there job is also to help with everything wedding related and we have yet to meet a bridesmaid who doesn’t want to jump in and help her bride whenever possible. Brides are sometimes reluctant to ask for help and take too much on themselves. Your bridesmaids expect and want to help you, they want to be involved. We guarantee that if you ask one of your bridesmaids to sort out the room, one of them to chat with your make-up artists around why you would prefer that they don’t use a ring light and ask another to help move your dresses, shoes and all your bits and pieces to one room that they will be more than happy to help.

wedding tips bride getting ready bridesmaids helping bride

OUR PROMISE

Regardless on if you have booked us to photograph your wedding or another wedding photographer, which is only allowed of course if we weren’t available ;). Implementing these tips will help ensure beautiful photographs from getting ready on the morning of your wedding.

That is not to say of course that you won’t still get some good photographs if you are not able to put all of these things in place. For all wedding photographers our job is to make the very best out of every situation and find ways of overcoming any issues to the best of our ability. All of the tips we have mentioned above though will help turn good photographs from getting ready into amazing photographs from getting ready.

Tommy + Laurene