A Bride’s Guide to Wedding Photo Styling

You chose your engagement ring and wedding band stack, you selected your dream wedding colors, and you chose key wedding elements that effectively represent you and your partner’s personality. Your wedding photos should effectively capture your wedding style to create a pristine cohesion that you can admire in albums for the rest of your life. 

You have dedicated ample time and energy into staging key stylistic details of your wedding day, and we believe they should not go unnoticed. 

We explore the 5 wedding photo styles offered by wedding photographers in detail and provide you with 4 wedding photo tips to help you capture not just the moment, but the sentiment and style of the moment. 

Pick and Choose: Wedding Photo Styles

There are 5 primary wedding photo styles from which to choose: classic, fine art, photojournalistic, lifestyle, and editorial. Each wedding photo style has a heap of benefits that, when paired with the right wedding aesthetic, can serve as the cherry on top of your wedding cake. 

Most wedding photographers are malleable and fully capable of catering their wedding photo style to the bride’s stylistic preferences. If you have yet to book a wedding photographer for your wedding day, you can use word-of-mouth referral or a detailed online search to find a photographer that specializes in one of the following wedding photo styles.  

Classic

The “classic” wedding photography style is timeless. Chances are that your mother, your mother’s mother, and your partner’s mother have the classic style of wedding photos that truly stand the test of time. 

If you aesthetically prefer the traditional wedding photo assortment with a hint of formality, a classic wedding photographer is the best choice for you.

Fine Art

The “fine art” wedding photo style creates an album worthy of a high-traffic art museum. This style of wedding photography captures the artistic perspective of your big day with a keen focus on details. You will often find fine art wedding photographers using soft, creamy lenses that evoke feelings of whimsy and romance. 

Photojournalistic

Photojournalistic wedding photography is a style that intends to document the raw emotions and real interactions between the couple, the wedding party, and the wedding guests. Wedding photojournalists allow an organic flow to dictate their shot list, careful to capture candid moments that make for a non-standard wedding photo album. 

Lifestyle

The “lifestyle” wedding photo style creates the perfect marriage between the photojournalistic wedding photography style and the editorial wedding photography style. Think: less journalistically candid and more naturally styled. The lifestyle wedding photographer will capture organic moments while setting the scene for comfortably staged moments.

Editorial

Editorial wedding photography is, as one would imagine, highly styled and staged to create a collection worthy of a magazine spread. As the most technical of all wedding photo styles, editorial wedding photos are highly detailed and pristinely staged to amp up the glamour and luxury. 

Wedding Photo Tips for Brides

As a bride-to-be, you have an overflowing plate of responsibilities. Despite a “to-do list” a mile long, color-coordinated seating arrangements, a detailed wedding flow, and delegated “to-do lists” for your MOH, there are a few things that will inevitably fall through the cracks. Do not let your wedding photos be that thing! 

Below are 4 wedding photo tips that will ensure your wedding photos perfectly capture the sentiment of your wedding day along with the actual course of very exciting events. 

Tip #1: Lean on your mood board

Whether you rely on Pinterest for a continuous feed of wedding inspiration, or you created an old-school wedding mood board with clippings from bridal and fashion magazines, a wedding mood board will be a useful tool for your wedding photographer. 

Just as your “not so secret anymore” engagement ring mood board helped guide your partner in the right direction when choosing your engagement ring, your wedding mood board can help to guide your photographer. All those stunning bride shots, the candid wedding party shots, and the wedding detail shots you have saved for inspiration can help your photographer create a shot list that is worthy of your mood board. Imagine that!

Tip #2: List out all accessories and details you would like to capture

While it may seem silly or small in comparison to, you know, the big-ticket wedding items like the bride, the groom, the dress, the ceremony… Capturing important accessories and thoughtful details in your wedding photo shot list is the key to documenting the effort you put into planning your big day. 

Accessories commonly included in wedding photo shot lists are:

• • The rings (engagement rings & wedding rings)
  • Wedding shoes
  • Bridal bouquet and bridesmaid bouquets
  • Bride perfume
  • Family heirlooms
  • The something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
  • Bridal accessories

A Note on Engagement Ring & Wedding Ring Shots

As a jewelry company, we feel obliged to make sure your dazzling diamonds look pristine in every photo. You did spend days, months, or years ruminating over the perfect engagement ring for your personality, after all. 

Before you speak with your wedding photographer about an accessory shot list, answer this question: what drew you to your engagement ring? Was there a specific detail that made your heart swoon? Did the mismatching engagement ring and wedding band metal appeal to your fashion-forward personality? 

Make sure to instruct your wedding photographer to capture the key element you love about your engagement ring and wedding band stack. If you can’t pick just one ring detail, ask for multiple angles. 

Capture the face value of this 2 Carat Emerald Cut Diamond Halo Engagement Ring including the round diamond halo surrounding the high clarity emerald diamond. 

Have your wedding photographer prop this 1.20 ct Diamond Two-Tone Hidden Halo™ Engagement Ring up against a surface to highlight the contrasting, two-toned metals while admiring the hidden halo. 

With intricate band detailing like this 1.50 ct Oval Diamond Platinum Engagement Ring, a face-on shot will allow the wedding photographer to capture the detailing on the face of your engagement ring.

Tip #3: Save the best lighting for couple photos

If you spend just 5 minutes on Instagram, you will observe that lighting is everything. 

That short period of time just before sunset where the light captures your golden blonde highlights, your skin glows in the sunlight, and your engagement ring dazzles with amber hues… That, friends, is the “golden hour.” A golden hour photoshoot can produce breathtaking wedding photos that make wedding magic nearly tangible.

You can (and should!) schedule your couple photos during this enchanting hour, regardless of your wedding photo style preference. Your wedding photographer has undoubtedly photographed many weddings with a wide range of time constraints and is prepared to make your wedding photo aesthetic preferences come to fruition. 

Inform your wedding photographer that you would like to take your couple photos as close to a golden hour as possible for the best lighting, and he/she will iron out the shot schedule accordingly. 

Tip #4: Make use of your location

You chose your wedding venue or wedding location for a specific reason. Whether you always envisioned marrying your partner in a cathedral-style church or a wide-open field with a picturesque backdrop of oak and evergreen trees, there is a specific detail that initially captured your attention enough to make a downpayment. 

Spend a moment and write down a few of the details about your venue or location that stand out to you and why. Share this list with your photographer so that they can incorporate these details into your wedding photoshoot to capture the true essence of your wedding location. 

An Engagement Ring to Fit Your Personal Aesthetic

An engagement ring and wedding band stack is some of the only (or the only) pieces of jewelry you wear regularly. Your engagement ring should reflect your personality, reveal a piece of your heart to the observer, and evoke feelings of admiration and confidence every time you glance down at your hand. 

At Lauren B, we are in the business of matching brides with their forever rings. We take into account your preferences, your dreams, your vision, and your personal aesthetic as we guide you through the engagement ring and wedding band shopping process. Sometimes, a bride has a unique spark and deep longing to create a custom wedding ring stack; our design consultants are available to walk you through the customization process to create a one-of-a-kind engagement ring unique to you. 

For general questions or specific questions about our engagement ring and wedding band offerings, please email [email protected].