Best Wedding Portraits

Tips & advice: How to get the best wedding portraits?

It’s your wedding and you want to get stunning photos of you all dressed up together. You want something non-formal. You would love to be able to look back at your photos in years to come and they still take your breath away. I know I would, and you could too! All it takes is a little ahead planning to get the best wedding portraits.

Now I’ll be honest, doing the session on the wedding day itself isn’t the best option and would advise against this. But if you really can’t do the session on another day, the key is to allow enough time. I advise my clients to plan one hour for their portrait photos. But this isn’t a post about how to squeeze a photo session into an action packed day. This is about the best wedding portraits.

The advantages of planning to do your portrait session before or after your wedding are numerous. I’d say the biggest has to be the end resulting photos – which it good as this is ultimately what we are after. Another big one is the extra time you’ll have to spend enjoying your wedding with your friends and family. Some other advantages are, getting to know your photographer and how they work before the big day, accessing locations that wouldn’t have been possible the day itself, taking advantage of the best time of day for lighting (this is also a big game changer), being more relaxed, wearing the dress for a second time, not worrying if the dress gets dirty, having more time for taking the photos, having a great experience, creating more fantastic memories… I could go on!

Let me tell you a little story about the above photo. When Cynthia and Kim first got in contact with me they shared their wedding website with me. I saw they were into motorbikes through a few photos and instantly asked if they would have bikes with them at the wedding. The idea grew from there. The wedding was to take place in Gordes which is one of the prettiest villages in the South of France. Located in the hills accessed by these bendy roads, I knew it would be prefect to get the best wedding portraits for them. They were leaving on their honeymoon the day after their wedding and I would be at the venue the day before. So we decided to do the photoshoot at sunset the night before the wedding. I remember seeing the joy on their faces during the shoot. It really was magic!

Before you set your plans in stone, have a chat with your wedding photographer. What ideas do they have? They should be able to advise you on how to get the best wedding portraits. You may need to plan another night at the venue or postpone your honeymoon one day. So do this now before it’s too late.

I hope this little tip helps. Keep a look out for further tips on my Instagram/Facebook posts or on my website.