Morning after photos: the trend that totally isn’t

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morning after photos alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)
Oh lord. The internet has its panties in a wad with yet another OMG SHOCKING!! wedding trend. This time it's “Morning after” photos, where a photographer comes to the wedding suite the morning after the wedding and takes pictures of you and your honey looking all sexy with your fuck-nest hair and tousled sheets. It's a cute enough concept (especially if you're poly and need some sexy shots for your couples-seeking personals ad) but bitches, we need to talk: this is not actually a trend.

So, I'm a wedding blogger. Watching wedding trends is my job. This “Morning after” thing? It's a wedding trend that I have never EVER seen in the real world — I've only ever seen it in puff pieces about how it's supposedly A Thing. My theory: this is not A Thing at all. This is something a few photographers would love to *become* A Thing because it's a fun concept for a shoot… but almost nobody is actually doing this.

I'm not going to get all media studies on your asses here, but this is painfully typical “slow news day” stuff. A couple people did something, suddenly a morning show producer in NY or LA decides it's “a trend,” and that therefore everyone must officially get their judgey hat out and examine. SEXY OR OVERSHARING!? OMG IT'S BOTH! EL SCANDALO! It may become a manufactured trend (where people hear about it being a trend, and then it actually becomes one) like Trash The Dress shoots did five years ago. But until the day my inbox is flooded with naked morning-after submissions in the same way that it's flooded with pictures of couples wearing animal masks, I'mma say it's not actually a trend.

(But the animal masks thing? TOTALLY FOR REAL.)

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Comments on Morning after photos: the trend that totally isn’t

  1. Yeah like someone wants to see pictures of me making hotel coffee in a bathrobe. Cuz thats what my morning after will look like.
    If you want to do bedroom photos… do em! No need to attach “wedding” to that too.

    • Haha, yeah my morning after was me still looking tired at home cleaning everyone’s stuff from getting ready for the wedding. No sexy times. Just sleep and recovery.

  2. hmm, we got married the day before Father’s Day. So our “morning after” was giggly at brunch with both of our dads. In my (2x married) experience, the wedding night isn’t sexy. It’s exhausted!!!

    • I hate to sound like a killjoy, but just from clicking on the link and viewing the content; I felt that these photos were inappropriate. Why should anyone care about your “first moments together”, that should really just be between you and your significant other.

      I recently got married and to be honest our morning after was waking up early to go to break down the rest of the stuff at the reception hall. It’s not that we aren’t romantic, we were just dead tired. I never realized that a wedding could be so physically exhausting.

      • I felt that these photos were inappropriate.

        Ooh, you got your judgey hat out, just like Good Morning America wanted you to! I’m not sure it matters what any of us thinks of whether this is appropriate — but Good Morning America clearly understands that weighing in is 90% of the fun. 😉

  3. My morning after
    hungover, wearing my husbands autobots t-shirt, reading wedding cards and laughing at my new husband for not having packed any socks

    • that sounds really adorable, actually. i’m no virgin, but i worry about our wedding night not being sexy because of how social we have to be beforehand. we’re both kind of introverted so i feel like by the time we leave the wedding we’ll be wiped out and not want to kiss, let alone consumate the marriage.

      • The secret of wedding nights is that it seems like NO ONE has sex. Seriously. You’re “on” from 8am (or whatever) the morning of, with no time alone or rest or time with your husband, add a decent amount of booze… The night of the wedding, it would have taken a miracle for either of us to have the energy to move. Sexy, it ain’t.

        I’m pretty sure that that’s what the first night of the honeymoon is for. 😉

  4. Oh geez…we didn’t even get frisky the night our wedding. We were so exhausted! He was snoring before I was even done taking off my shoes. Nothing to see there the next morning haha! it really must be boring news if they are trying to make this a faux trend!

  5. This *literally* had me laughing out loud. I’m talking hysterics. Does anyone even have sex on their wedding night? Not one of the couples I have spoken with have said they have. This does give me sone ideas though. Haha. We’ll just bring the tripod though.

    • We totally did. It took a little bit of mental struggle to get started (“Ok, Self: you only get one wedding night. You can pull it together and summon the energy for sexytimes for a half hour or so.”) and it wasn’t the best night of our lives, but there was something really special about it.

    • A couple of my friends were determined to “consummate” on their wedding. I only know from the story but apparently they were both so drunk it was more of a “I’m gonna put it in for a minute just so we can say we had sex” then they fell asleep. If you know this couple it’s a hilarious story because I have no doubt it’s 100% true.

  6. Ha! What cracks me up the most is that this is so OMG SCANDALOUS THEY FINALLY HAD SEX! Uhhh…..are we living in the 50s, people?

  7. We had sex on our wedding night, but we were so exhausted at the same time. LOL. Morning after photos would have been me getting my husbands jeans and tee shirt on while he put on his suit pants and button up (because I forgot to pack an outfit) and going down to the cafe for cereal and toast LOL

  8. I’m pretty sure our morning after is going to involve sleep… and aspirin… Then more sleep. lol

  9. Even if this were a “thing”, who cares if couples do this? Chances are, not many (if any) people other than the couple will see the sexy (or not so sexy) morning after photos. Even if they did…meh. Plus, how many people are going to post “naughty” photos of themselves? If they take the “naughty” photos, they’re more likely to keep those photos for themselves.

    The media just wanted to try and get people’s panties in bunches and knots because they haven’t had anything juicy to gossip about recently.

  10. My husband had worked overnight and got off work at 6am before our wedding and we both got about 3 hours of sleep before our day. Around 9pm he looked at me and said, “I’m done.” The next day, after sleeping in late, we got up, fooled around, and went right back to Disneyland for the final weekend of elecTRONica. Was it sexy pornographic sex? No. Are we hot, sexy beautiful L.A. People? No. And I sure as fukk didn’t need pics of us getting crazy!

  11. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I seem to remember a trend a few years ago of the last shot of the wedding album being the door of the honeymoon suite with a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging off of it at a jaunty thrown-on-because-we-just-can’t-wait-to-DO-EEET! angle…this just seems like an extension of that.

    Eh…like Trash The Dress, it’s not something I chose to do, but I certainly wouldn’t judge someone else for doing it. Our first dance song was “Crash” by Dave Matthews, and we got flak (gentle flak, but still, flak) from people who thought it was too sexy of a song to use for a first dance. But then, I was adamant about avoiding the Garter Removal from the Bride’s Thigh with the Groom’s Teeth thing because it just wasn’t my thing. It’s all a matter of what feels right for you & your wedding/partner/life, and if a morning after shot is something you want to celebrate as part of your wedding, then by all means, cover the naughty bits (or y’know, don’t. Whatever you want!) and shoot away.

    • if a morning after shot is something you want to celebrate as part of your wedding, then by all means, cover the naughty bits (or y’know, don’t. Whatever you want!) and shoot away.

      Exactly that. I mean, I’m FULLY in support of completely filthy photo shoots among consenting adults (and a willing photographer)… but it’s definitely not a wedding trend.

      • Realistically, it sounds like an /awesome/ idea for a boudoir shoot. It sounds fun!

        Although – maybe more like the “Morning several days after” photo set. When I got up after my wedding, my hair was sticking in forty directions, my eyelashes were stuck together, and I still had bits of garment tape stuck to my skin.

        The shock value seems really forced, though.

    • You got flak over Dave Matthews?? Seriously?

      A friend put together a playlist of dance-y stuff for us, and we didn’t actually care enough to pick out a first dance song, so we wound up laughing our way through Foxy Lady. And if anyone gave me flak over that, they’d have gotten what-for, at that point… Gawd, people have time to be judge-y over this stuff? Do they have nothing to do? I could point them to some satisfying hobbies, maybe a book club or two…

      *mind is officially boggled*

  12. So wait guys. So many etiquette questions here. Do I have to buy my photog an adjoining room, just in case we get up early or sleep in or get up in the middle of the night for a “snack” and really want to capture the moment? Do we get a discount if the post-wedding sex gets over with pretty fast, so she can just grab the photos while she’s hangin’ around after the wedding? What’s the protocol in case she wants to join in?

  13. I don’t know if I’m the only one, but on my wedding night my husband and I didn’t even do IT. Man, we were so tired from all the preparations leading up to the wedding that we crashed as soon as we got in the room. Morning after photos wouldn’t have been so steamy for us!!!

  14. We did IT on our wedding night only because the post reception after party was at his best man’s house and I called hubby in to help me change out if the wedding dress that I was STILL wearing because I was too tipsy to take it off myself. Got caught up in the moment as they say. But by the time we got to bed we were both to tired to do anything but fall fast asleep.

  15. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I would appreciate anybody snapping pictures of me and my future husband several hours after I have lost my virginity to him. Besides, I have my career to think about, and if those pictures were to somehow get posted on the web . . .

    • Hahahahah…bloody sheet, the twenty-first century edition!

      (Not implying that all, or even most virgins bloody the sheets; some do, many don’t. Gosh, there must’ve been a lot of subterfuge back in the bloody sheets days.)

      • yes, I read that some women hid a thimble of pigs blood (hid where or how I suppose is up to your imagination) to use.

  16. Ours would look one of two ways:
    Option 1: us, 3 year old and 12 year old sitting on our bed, looking tired (hungover for me) eating breakfast and watching the super mario bros film, or
    Option 2:me hungover and star shaped on the bed with Chris drooling and holding on to the bed for dear life.
    Actually this sounds better than my tequila dancing (followed by being so drunk I loose a shoe and end up with my bra on the outside) 🙂

  17. Ohhh, I love it. If you want to shoot some softcore or hardcore porn of yourselves, and you find a willing photog, WHO CARES. How this is any different from a “leaked” celeb sex film, I don’t know, but hey. Look at it this way: nothing terrible enough was happening that day, so they chose to report on this. Pretty good day then, I say.

  18. I have an acquaintance who is a photog who, when he does trash the dress shoots with couples, does some sexy shots likes these.

    Our morning after was in our regular bed in our the house is full of company PJ’s – not really sexy times for us either.

  19. If I had a photographer coming in to shoot the morning after, he or she would have to be ok with full penetration pics, accentuated by the worst bed head ever. I plan on getting laid on my first morning as a wife, not prissing around for a photo shoot. To each their own I guess, but I wouldn’t pay money for it when I’ve got my own flip cam for home erotica. 😛

  20. It seems funny and kind of cute if it’s what you’re into. I’m not the sort who gets all twisted up over anything consenting adults want to do with each other. It seems to me that the whole media “trend” of talking about something like this and inviting judgement over it is a big part of what is wrong with this country right now. As a whole, a big part of the population spends way too much time thinking about and weighing in on what grown folks do in the bedroom, IMHO.

    And this post is the first I’ve heard of this “trend”, but I have a friend who is one hell of a pinup photographer and I’m thinking she and I should somehow band together to make this a “Thing” because it seems like it would be fun as hell to shoot.

    • I’m with you, but the mainstream media knows that passing judgment is everyone’s favorite spectator sport.

  21. This is the result of the need to over share. these are the same people who told us every detail of their courtship, every detail of engagement, every detail of wedding plans on FB and Twitter. its wonderful to be happy, and to be in love, we dont need to know EVERYTHING!

  22. Our trendy morning after photos would have captured this: Standing naked in the fridge stuffing our faces with tasty reception left overs.
    We were RAVENOUS.
    For empanadas and cupcakes.

  23. Trend? Nope. If you wanted to? Power to you. Me? I’m not a morning person. I expect that I’ll be exhausted, hung over, and cursing myself for setting up that goddamn breakfast which just required a Sunday morning alarm clock.

  24. I personally would find this embarrassing and gross, not because I’m a virgin (yep, I am) but because that is something I don’t want to share with anyone but my husband. ^_^ And while I hope this never becomes a trend, I think it’s none of anyone’s business if someone did this, unless couples started selling their photos, or something equally disturbing!

  25. OMG. I saw this exact segment on GMA and said to myself “trend…never heard of it.” Turns out the woman in the couple featured is a PR executive, coincidence …mmm I think not.

  26. This sounds incredibly sexy. Not something I would share, but it would be nice years form now to look at the pictures and remember the time. I felt like a million bucks the day after my wedding, and not because there was tons of sexytime, but because it was more awesome. We had company though so this wouldve been awkward in front of my aunt…

  27. We’d probably take silly pictures of ourselves with our own camera, and be like LOL TIMER SAYS 10 SECONDS LOOK CUTE LOOK CUTE *flash* OMG ITS JUST YOUR FOREHEAD AND THE PILLOW OMG! because we do like to take pics of us in hotels but we would definitely not pay someone to do this.

  28. I recently received a hysterical email about “rainbow parties” – remaking its rounds after a couple of years of being buried.

    Here’s the thing: if the morning OR the evening news asks if something is a new trend among women/teenagers, chances are that it is NOT.

  29. Ok, I started shooting “morning after” sessions for married couples several years ago; they were not “bedroom” photos nor boudoir sessions. The first has the couple jumping on the bed and just having fun today; the next was a couple (all were fully dressed) hanging out on the bed with their dog, who was also in the wedding.

    They don’t have to be trashy, and they can actually be kind of nice, especially if your wedding portraits were taken before your ceremony. [I always told my clients, “no matter how long you’ve been living together or whatever, it’s different when you’re married. There’s a shine to it and it shows in the photos.] That’s why I started offering the option to my brides, and the ones who did it, loved it.

    But again, not about having sex, not about “first time together.”

    It’s not a trend and it’s definitely not new.

    • Can this pleasse please please be a trend? I think that the point is beeing missed, here.
      See… I actually wished we had some morning after photos, and also more “Day-of huge-hordes-of-wonderful-people-helping-set-up” photos. The latter because it would make it easier to exhibit my/our recognition of their hard work. (Seriously, if you have a community wedding MAKE SURE SOMEONE TAKES PICTURES OF THE PROCESS!!!) But
      the former (Being the “Morning after”) photos are a GREAT IDEA! NOT because of sexy times or bedhead times or I-was-so-tired-I-didn’t-roll-over-and-now-my-face-is-flat-on-one-side times…
      These photos should exist, and this should be a trend BECAUSE that morning/day after time is important too. While you’re feeding stale puff pastry to the cat,(They LOVE it!) or playing “Identify the stain” with your vintage napkins. (The final lightning round mystery stain was soy candle drippings. I won.)
      While you’re feeding yourselves, each other, and the few remaining guests handfuls of rainbow colored whipped cream from the dessert bar, (Also, seriously, do this. Bestest rainbows. OMNOMNOM) *Ahem* While you’re doing all of these things, it’s magic. It’s an expression and manifestation of what you did the day before. Here we are exhibiting our teamwork by moving this huge heavy oak table. Here we are splitting the last overlooked artichoke and brie crostini. Here we are spraying our family members with leftover seltzer from the keg. Here we are using our thumbnails to scrape jam off of the tablecloth so it’ll come off of the table.
      Guys, this is what you got married for in the first place! To have seltzer fights and to share leftovers and to fight with stuck-on jam and to have soda water fights! Together. So let this be a trend; it doesn’t have to be about sexy times, but about the dawn of a new era. The one that you chose together. Let’s Photograph it!

      But not, you know, “IT” ’cause that’s just a silly fake fakey fake-o trend.

  30. The morning after our wedding was pretty fun. We had the wedding at our farm and a bunch of people crashed out in tents and around the house. In the morning we opened presents, finished off the kegs/champagne, and made a big breakfast scramble. The best parts were using a big gift box for a table and later opening it and realizing it contained…a table, and when someone found a dreadlock in the yard! That was good for a laugh.

  31. I don’t think I would feel comfortable with a photographer catching our “sexy time”. But I really like the idea of having a few shots of the morning-after-breakfast-in-bed! Just two sleepy people having tea and leftover wedding cake… sounds great to me! 🙂

  32. didn’t there, back in the dark ages,used to be a thing where the woman got “deflowered” and the people waited downstairs for the ban to hold up a bloody sheet as proof for all the people to cheer him? I saw that in a movie once. Totally grossed me out. And this “trend” kind of reminded me of that

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