Styling details on a wedding day is one of my favorite parts of the day (let’s be real, ALL parts of a wedding day are my fav)! I enjoy doing something different for each bride and getting creative with each one of her very special details. When a bride looks back on her wedding pictures, she’s not just going to see perfectly curated and styled images, she’s going to see the shoes she walked down the aisle to her husband in, the perfume her husband still remembers her wearing on their wedding day, the flowers she hung to dry to keep forever from her bouquet, the invitation that invited everyone special in their lives to their big day…

The details matter! And how we shoot them matters, too!

In this new series for beginners, I want to be able to provide small tips and tricks to any new photographers out there that may just be starting out. Or maybe you’re shooting your FIRST wedding this weekend!

When styling, don’t settle for the hotel carpet, the bedspread or the ugly maroon chairs that DONT match your brides wedding colors! Pull in the wedding dress, the veil or a bridesmaid dress to add color and keep a clean background! In this case, (photo below) the shot on the left is using the hotel chair to style these beautiful shoes. The maroon color does these shoes NO justice and it wasn’t one of the brides colors, so giving this image to my client wouldn’t have been serving her very well. Typically I like to use a bridesmaid dress since A) I know it will be one of the brides colors, and B) 99% of the time, the maids aren’t in their dresses yet so I can use them to style everything!

In this case however, the maids were in their dresses when I arrived, SO I had one of them sit in a chair and lean as far back as she could to give me an elongated look with no wrinkles to the dress, sat the shoes on her thighs and took the shot.

What this did was:

– Gave me a clean background

– Used one of the brides wedding colors

– Provided a detail image thats much more appealing to the eye

– Provided consistency in her wedding colors and remained true to the brides vision

That’s how I styled this one image, taking it from hotel maroon boring (and ugly) chair, to brides colors and an appealing, sophisticated looking image. Nobody would EVER know there was a person under that dress if I hadn’t of just said anything!! So if you think you can’t obtain these types of images when your bride and her maids are already in their dresses when you arrive, think again! Get creative and remember WHY you’re taking these images. Stay true to serving your clients well and don’t be afraid to ask a bridesmaid to sit down, lean back, arch her back and be still for 20 seconds while you get the shot you need ;-) LOL! Those girls want to help you out anyway in making sure their best friend receives the best wedding images possible!!

So that’s it! Go out and ROCK that wedding you have this weekend, knowing you’re capable of making anything happen when it comes to shooting details beautifully! :)

xoxo!