Bride’s Coverage : 5 Ways to Help Your Wedding Photographer Shoot Your Getting Ready Photos

As a wedding storyteller, photographing my clients as they get ready for their wedding ceremony is a must. Since I’ve gotten to know the bride and groom during their engagement session so being there from the start just reinforces the trust and rapport I’ve already built before their wedding. This is also the time where I get to meet the bride’s parents and her closest friends whom she chose as her bridesmaids.

I like to get to know the people I photograph because I want them to feel comfortable around me. As a wedding photojournalist, my camera is almost always on my face when I’m working. I am fully aware how intimidating our equipments can be and how some people might feel creeped out at first with someone having to document their every move. I get it. My brides and grooms hired me for my style and are aware of how I worked, but their friends and families might not. So being there as the bride gets ready allows me to introduce myself first and assure them that I‘m not really a creepy person after all.

What I love about shooting the Getting Ready portion is seeing my client’s transformation into a bride and capturing her friends and families reaction to that. I especially love it when the Father of the Bride gets choked up seeing his daughter for the first time as a bride. I get goose bumps every time.

During the Bride’s Coverage, these are what I try to photograph:

– Candid moments of the bride, her bridesmaids and her families as they get ready
– Detail shots of the bride’s gown, her jewellery, shoes, etc.
– Portraits of the bride on her own
– Portraits of the bride with each bridesmaids
– Portraits of the bride together with all the bridesmaids
– Portraits of the bride with her parents
– Portraits of the bride with her immediate family

Photographing the getting ready portion of the day however have its own challenges. So here are a few things you can do to help your wedding photographer.

1. Create A Realistic Wedding Timeline.

This is probably the most important one to keep in mind. You can’t expect your wedding photographer to accomplish everything I’ve listed above in thirty minutes. And if you feel stressed out because you’re rushing, it will show in your photos. So do yourself a favour and plan your timeline well. I wrote a blog post on how to create a realistic wedding timeline so you can check that out here.

2. Have your makeup done before your wedding photographer arrives.

Having your makeup done early means that your photographer can spend that time she would have spent photographing you getting your makeup on to other things. Your makeup artist can give you a touch up right before you put on your dress so you’ll still have those types of photos done. Also, photos of you without makeup won’t make it to the album anyway so it‘s best to allocate that time somewhere else.

3. Organize your details in one spot.

That means have your gown, shoes, jewellery, and bouquet together in one place so your wedding photographer doesn’t have to ask your bridesmaids for these items several times. It saves us a good amount of time when we don’t have to hunt.

4. Find a room with windows that allow natural light.

Good light means good photos, so having you put your dress on at a place where there’s good light will tremendously help your photographer. It’s your photographer’s job to find the best light in the house, mind you, but finding this out ahead leads to point #5

5. Clean up the clutter.

I know that this is unavoidable, but at least give it a try. Clutter in images are very distracting and there are ways to minimize it on camera. But, if you really like your wedding photographer, help them out a bit by keeping this in mind.