Bridal showers, bachelorette parties and weddings… Oh my! Wedding Season is here and I couldn’t be more excited! I’ve already attended one wedding this year, next I have bachelorette in June and July, a bridal shower in July and August and wedding in August too! Oh and a bunch of brides I’m styling for engagement, bridal and honeymoon photos… it’s going to be a busy summer!
For all the brides getting married soon or friends of brides I wanted to take the time and share with you some alternative ideas to the traditional bridal portrait session. Don’t get me wrong, I love traditional bridal sessions, but they may not be for everyone.
Hopefully your photographer has a variety of packages available that include other sessions beyond the wedding.
When Spencer and I got married we splurged on our photos and I’m so glad we did. I’m slightly obsessed with photos in case you haven’t noticed. Our package consisted of the following: Engagement Session, Bridal Session and Wedding day. Our photographer Katy Trefry was AMAZING and really worked with us to customize the perfect package.
For our actual engagement, Spencer secretly hired a professional photographer to capture the entire moment which meant we really didn’t need another engagement session since we had pictures of the real proposal and planned to use those for our “save- the-dates”. However, I believe it’s very important for both you and your partner to work with your wedding photographer prior to the wedding. In doing so, you start to build a relationship and hopefully feel a bit more comfortable when taking photos on your wedding day. I talked with Katy and we decided to “exchange” our engagement shoot for an intimate and lifestyle photo session. Side note: First, I love, love, love our photos from this session, but in hind sight I may have chosen to do it after the wedding. We have tons of beautiful intimate photos together but in all the photos Spencer isn’t wearing his wedding ring because we actually weren’t married yet! And I only have my engagement ring on… so something to think about if you would be considering something like this.
The other session in our package was the bridal session. While I love my wedding dress, it wasn’t the item I really splurged on and I’m very thoughtful on how I was going to use the photos. I ultimately decided that having a few hundred photos of just me in my wedding dress wasn’t something I thought made sense for me. So there I was chatting with Katy again, asking her about a bridal boudoir session. She loved the idea and gladly made the exchange. By now our wedding package looked quite a bit different than the original. We still had three sessions, but we just adjusted the type of photos we would capture in a few of them.
You might be thinking to yourself, how could you use photos like these, or what would you do with them? As I mentioned before, everyone is different. I prefer to turn our photos into art. So we have them hanging in our home… but not all of them are around for everyone to see. We have one of our lifestyle images in our kitchen and three of our intimate photos in our master bathroom. I used the images from my bridal boudoir to create a special photo book for Spencer and gave it to him as a gift the night before our wedding. Along with the book was strict instructions not to open until he was alone!
A bridal boudoir session can consist of you in your wedding gown or in a wedding inspired gown like the one I’m wearing here from Ontavia Roulette. Wrapped in tulle I felt like a princess and a little sexy too. I’m completely covered but there is enough skin showing to set the tone of sweet and sultry. I would also consider a few outfit changes. Maybe a men’s dress shirt, a little night gown, possibly a favorite team jersey. These pictures are for you or you and your partner… take the chance to be creative within your own comfort zone. The last thought I’ll leave you with is to think about your photo location…. possibly your home, hotel room, waterfall in the woods, a special place that is meaningful to both of you. I chose the Pagoda in Patterson Park for this bridal boudoir style inspiration. The views are breath taking, the stairs are the perfect artistic backdrop and it’s in Baltimore where Spencer and I met.
If you would like to hear more about boudoir, intimate couple sessions or talk through some ideas for your own upcoming photo sessions please email me!
Huge thank you to all the amazing folks who helped me create this bridal boudoir.
photography Jan Galvan / dress Ontavia Roulette / makeup Makeup by Crista
jewelry Julie Vos from Becket Hitch / tan Two Bronzed Babes / venue Pagoda at Patterson Park
