My husband and I got married a little over a month ago now, and I have realized that one of the best decisions that we made was to have a second portrait session after we returned home from our honeymoon. Since I'm a photographer myself, getting good wedding photos was important to me, and I was stressed that perhaps the short timeframe in which we needed to get all of our “perfect wedding portraits” wasn't going to be long enough, was going to be too stressful, or was going to be too hot.
So I decided that having more photos of us taken when we didn't have those stresses or constraints sounded like a much better idea, and man were there a lot of benefits to that choice…
1. Quick photo turn-around time
Our wedding day photographer is highly sought-after, and therefore very busy. We won't be seeing our wedding photos for another few weeks yet. The photographer that we hired for our second portrait session does primarily family sessions, was able to get us a sneak preview the next day, and we got our full session photos back within two weeks. And now, even though we don't have all of our photos from our wedding day, at least we have photos of us in our pretty outfits. Plus, we were able to get pictures of us with our “Thank You” sign to send out our thank you cards ASAP.
2. Speaking of our pretty outfits…
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There are very few times in life when wearing a wedding dress is fitting for the occasion. So getting to fancy ourselves up once again, and get a little extra use out of the outfits was great. I also did my own hair and makeup for the second shoot, but some photographers offer portrait sessions that include hair and makeup.
3. Awesome photography on a budget
We had a tight budget for our wedding, so we weren't able to afford the big, fancy wedding photography package that I so desperately wish we could have. But single-hour portrait sessions tend to be fairly affordable — depending on the photographer they can be between $150-$300.
4. No pressure
By having a second session we also had a whole hour in which I could be sure we got every pose that I had wanted, used every prop, got lots of angles — and I didn't feel rushed to get everything done before the ceremony started. With just us and the photographer there, there was no pressure to make sure that we had photos of the bridal party or anyone else. It was all about us.
5. Control over weather and lighting
We had much more desirable weather for the light during our second session. Our wedding day was supposed to be rainy, but turned out to be hot and sunny — which can be difficult lighting for photography. On the day of our second session it was perfectly overcast with a fantastic diffused light. This gave us a lot more images of us where we aren't all sweaty and squinting into the bright sun. Plus if the weather had been bad, we could have rescheduled.
6. Total privacy
My husband has social anxiety, so being able to relax with just one other person and not worrying about a whole lot of people watching us while we took photos made it much easier to get fun and comfortable pictures of us.
In the end we got more budget-friendly photos back earlier, and including all of the poses I had dreamed of, with a laid-back session that wasn't under a time crunch, and I got to wear my beautiful dress again before hiding it away in a bag!
Would YOU do a separate post-wedding portrait session?
