Here are the top ten ways to love your wedding day images! There is no reason to have buyer’s remorse after your wedding day! With proper planning and a little foresight, you can avoid all the reasons that lead to hating your wedding photos. Here are the top ten things you need to know in order to LOVE your wedding day images.

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Top 10 Ways to Love Your Wedding Images

  1. RELAX
    When your day is finally here, just relax. Sure, some bad things happen. It might rain or snow. The cake might be late. The officiant may forget to sign your marriage license. If you are smart, you have either hired a wedding coordinator or your maid of honor is super efficient and can juggle these problems with her eyes closed. At any rate, I can guarantee that something will go wrong. The bottom line is, if you are married to the love of your life at the end of the day, the day is perfect. Relax. You don’t want to look stressed in your photos. Enjoy each and every moment, even if your mom lost the wedding band. You can always borrow the officiant’s.
  2. GET RID OF YOUR WEDDING PINTEREST® BOARDS
    Pinterest boards are a great way to gather ideas and inspiration, but that is where you should draw the line. Many brides try to replicate and recreate entire weddings and receptions. The day is yours! Make it your own! Your wedding isn’t those weddings… so your photos aren’t going to look like those weddings! And, if I’m being honest, when a client sends me a Pinterest board to look at, I spend about .003 obligatory seconds looking at it. Honestly, I don’t appreciate when someone expects me to emulate another photographer’s work. It deflates me. When I photograph a wedding, I want to do so with fresh eyes and ideas. I want to be challenged. I want to shoot for the location, for the lighting, for the theme, for the feeling, and for you—not to copy something on Pinterest.
  3. LOVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER
    You should have spent a pretty good amount of time getting to know your photographer. They are the only vendor, unless you’ve also hired a coordinator or videographer, that you will spend your entire wedding day and night with. You should spend time reading their blog, following their social media channels, watching their YouTube® channel, and looking at their online portfolios. Become familiar with the way they recap a wedding. You should love their images AND their personalities. If you resent anything about them, chances are you are also going to resent the images they take.
  4. CHOOSE WEDDING PROFESSIONALS 
    The old adage is true… you do get what you pay for. I would not recommend saving money or budget shopping on any aspect of your day that is important to you. If cake isn’t your thing, then that’s where you can cut costs. If you don’t care too much for flowers, then save a little there. If you don’t care if your dance floor is a rockin’, then hire a DJ who blasts tunes off his YouTube® playlists. However, if any of these things or any other part of the day IS important to you, hire someone who knows what they are doing and who does it well. You will be thankful to be taken care of by someone who knows their craft AND you will be a lot less stressed out on your special day. See #1 above.
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  5. QUIT LOOKING AT THE CAMERA
    There is something to be said about a candid photograph. Pioneer photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson made a name for himself by taking candid photographs. Your photographer does not want you to look at them and smile each time they press the shutter button. They actually want you to be unaware of their presence… or at least pretend to be. You will enjoy the photos much more if you’re not looking directly at the camera and smiling each time too. 
  6. HAVE A WELL-PLANNED TIMELINE
    If your coordinator and/or photographer does not offer a timeline service, DO NOT HIRE THEM. It sounds silly to plan out every minute of the wedding day, but it’s actually very necessary. There is no way I’d allow myself to be hired to shoot a wedding and NOT know precisely when cake cutting was planned, or when the family formals were to take place. Why? Because if you’re planning on family formals to happen after a 5:30pm, 30-minute, outdoor ceremony on a day that the sun sets at 6:04pm, I’m setting myself up for failure. Because if cake cutting is at 8:35pm, but I haven’t taken a bathroom break since 8:35am and that’s when I decide it’s time, I’m setting myself up for failure. I need to know what equipment I will need and where I will need it. I need to know how I can direct my assistant and my second shooter for maximum success. I need to know that I have ample time to get all my safe shots before I start trying to get the creative ones. Timelines never go exactly as planned, but having a well-thought out execution of the day is critical to having a successful day of wedding photography.
  7. GO SLOW ON THE GIN
    Or any of the alcohol for that matter. It’s no fun being $&!^-faced by the time the ceremony rolls around. You want to be able to recite your vows and remember your name. Plus, if you hate your drunk face, I can’t Photoshop® it out. There’s no harm in a few mimosas, but there will plenty of time to get wasted at the reception! Drink slowly, stay hydrated and fed throughout the day. (You should also make this rule applicable to your wedding party!)
  8. SKIP THE LASER LIGHTS
    There isn’t enough money in the world to pay me to Photoshop the green lights off of your face in your first dance photos. But, there is an easier and less expensive way to deal with this. Skip the laser lights!! If you MUST have disco lighting at your wedding reception consider these alternatives: (1) Ask the DJ to save the laser lights until all the special dances are over. (2) Ask the DJ for uplighting instead. It is much more pleasant and doesn’t bleed out on your skin.
  9. PRINT THE IMAGES YOU LOVE
    You MUST have a wedding album printed. For the record, each of my wedding collections comes with an Italian, handcrafted wedding album!! It is important to have an heirloom quality album to pass down to the generations that will follow. And you MUST print some images to place around your home. I believe it’s necessary to be reminded of the love you share with your spouse. What better way to do this than to place images in your home to be a visible testament of that love.
  10. SHARE THE IMAGES WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND GUESTS
    If you purchase a wedding collection that includes the photo digitals, don’t hoard them for yourself. Share them! The number one complaint I have from family and friends of the wedding couples who are NOT my clients is that they never see the images from the day. They see the photographers running around all day long taking a gazillion pictures, but with exception to the Facebook sneak peek, they rarely see the final images. Your family and friends want to share in the special day with you and that includes sharing the images. Chances are, you invested a lot of money in your wedding photography, share the experience and get even more bang for your buck.
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If you want to LOVE your wedding day images, follow these ten simple tips! You’ll be glad you did!

The post, Top 10 Ways to Love Your Wedding Images, first appeared on Ata-Girl Photography Co.’s website and blog. Please feel free to comment here, or share this post with your friends via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Please email me if you have any questions about this article or want to share a neat idea for a future blog post with me.