It’s funny what comes up in conversations with friends, especially when it comes to weddings.  Normally, I don’t talk about weddings or photography too much with my close friends (at least I don’t think I do….!), but if we are on the phone during the work day, then it’s bound to come up.  And during a phone call yesterday, we started talking about some photos that, from her perspective, were some that she didn’t see as important as other photos taken during the day.  And as you can gather from the title of this post, you can figure out what we were discussing!

Every wedding day has its own flow because every bride and groom are different.  Their personalities, the city, the venue, the families… all of that helps dictate what the day will be like.  But every wedding day is similar in that we have a set list of photos (in our heads more than on a sheet of paper) that we always get.  I think that’s why shooting weddings works so well for me… because I get the structure and details that the engineering side of my brain likes, but I also get the flexibility and creativity of each wedding being different that the creative side of my brain likes!  This really is the perfect job for me!

But as we are going through each wedding day, we always get photos of the bride and her bridesmaids and of the groom with his groomsmen.  We get all the group photos, we get the ones where we pull the groom forward to highlight him, and we get individual photos of the bride and groom with each of their attendants.  Thinking back on it, I don’t think I’ve ever posted those photos before, but it’s not because they aren’t important.  The reason we take them is not even so much for the bride and groom but more for the bridesmaids and groomsmen!

Think about it; you get up on a wedding day to go and stand beside one of your best friends as he or she commits to love and cherish the love of their life.  If you’re a girl, then you’re getting hair and makeup done, you’re helping with last minute details, you’re hanging out and talking about any and everything under the sun!  You help your friend get into her dress and stand beside her for photos and watch her walk up the aisle a single girl and back down the aisle a married woman!  Everyone heads to the reception and you celebrate the night away and wave goodbye as they hop into their getaway car.  It’s been an amazing day and you got a few photos of the day on your phone but you didn’t think to get one of the two of you – all dressed up and her in her beautiful white dress – until the end of the reception when it was dark.  And now that you look back on it, the photo is kind of blurry.

Now don’t get me wrong, even those blurry cell phone pictures have good memories attached!  I have several of those too that I just can’t get rid of!  But thankfully, earlier in the wedding day, when everyone was still fresh and the light was good, the photographers were able to get a photo of you with your best friend that you just waved goodbye to.  So not only do you have that photo on your phone, but you also have another one that you can download in a couple of weeks.  Both will definitely be posted, but the one with the better light may end up being your profile picture :-)  Not only that, but for your birthday or maybe even Christmas later that year, you get a box in the mail from your newly married friend.  And inside is a beautifully wrapped package that contains that same photo set inside a frame!

You KNOW I had to include this one!!

Happy Friday, friends!