getting ready shots to love

Your wedding photos have two jobs - to be a tangible memory of all the beautiful intangibles of your day (like joy and anticipation and jubilation), and to tell a complete narrative. While the best photos are documentary-style, there are some things you can do to make sure the story the images tell is the most beautiful version of the story.

With a little planning, you can make sure your photos properly reflect your love - a little outer-prettiness to represent the inner beauty.

1. Choose a getting-ready space with an abundance of natural light, and enough room for the important people and the important things.

The perfect space might be your Nan's place in the suburbs with her manicured lawn and awesome kitschy dining room. It might be a boutique hotel in the city, or one of the little houses on a big property.

Wherever it is, the same things are important: natural light, and room to move. Some super fancy hotels have tiny spaces and curtains you can't open. Sunlight is good for people, it's good for your makeup artist, and it's good for photos. If all your bridal party and family are crammed into a tiny room, irritability and mess are almost inevitable.

2. Plan for peace.

If you thrive on buzzing activity and mayhem, by all means invite anyone who'll fit to get ready with you. But if you're a little nervous, and need some calm - make sure you plan for this in advance to make sure you don't step on any toes (figuratively or literally).

An orderly room can help you feel calm and collected when your stomach butterflies are partying, and of course tidiness looks far better in photos! No groomsmen's undies draped across the armchair, please!

3. Think about the details that are important to you.

When we shoot getting ready, we will normally look for important details - accessories, outfits, flowers, sentimental objects - that the couple will want to remember. If there are some special things that are really important to you that might fall outside the things we'd typically look for - put them together so we can find them easily (and you don't need to add another thing to your mental to-do list "ask photographer to take a photo of Nan's bracelet" on the day).

Forget a shot list - nothing slows a photographer down more than having to refer to a bit of paper in their pocket when they'd much rather be following the action!

4. Get the timing right

There are some photos that are really lovely, and we definitely want to be around to get them. We don't need to be there for the bare makeup-less faces, but it is nice to be there for putting on bowties and corsages, and doing up dresses.

It's always wise to schedule things with lots of extra time so you can feel calm and never rushed (and there's lots of room for error if anything goes wrong). We like to have some time before you leave to get portraits of all the important people - they're very quick, but can be some of the nicest photos of the day.

There's something about taking a quiet moment from all the activity that lets the wonderful gravity and significance of the moment properly sink in.