Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of shooting Kennedy’s bridal photos at The Videre Estate. I typically don’t do more than a dozen bridal sessions a year, and they are always such a treat! We visited The Videre earlier on to shoot their engagement session, and it was so great coming out here for her bridals and seeing all the progress that was made at the venue! The bridal suite at The Videre is so beautiful, it was super fun as a photographer to be able to play around in a new space with this gorgeous lady. If you want more photos from this venue, click here for their wedding!

“Should I take bridal photos?”

I often get asked by brides if they should do a bridal session. My answer is… yes! Well, in my opinion, haha. I love bridal sessions because it gives us a ton of time to be creative and have fun taking photos that just focus on YOU. It’s an opportunity to see what your dress, hair, and makeup look like together, in case you decide you want to change something before the big day (which I’ve had people do!). It’s also a fun time to bond with your Mom or the motherly figure in your life, because that person will typically want to come along for your bridals. Oh, and we can print your photos to display at the wedding!

If you don’t do a bridal session, will you get bridal photos on your wedding day? Of course! But a bridal session is at least a full hour focused strictly on you. We’ll get tons of different options and scenes. And if you want to get portraits done somewhere other than your venue, that’s an option also!

I also love that I can be a little creative with editing, for bridals! I try to keep them fairly similar to my normal style, but I can play around a little bit without worrying about them being 100% cohesive. On your wedding day, I focus on consistency. For bridals, we can play and get a little funkier!

Direct Flash vs Bounced Flash

This might be more for photographers than brides, but bridals are a great time to play around with different techniques! You can get so much variety in the photos by just changing up the light. I’ve been loving the direct flash trend that’s happening right now. While I do prefer a bounced flash or natural light most of the time (like the photo above on the left), bridals allow us so much time to play and get creative (like the direct flash photo on the right).

Black and White vs Color

I also like to play around with black and white versus color, for bridals! Lots of different lighting and editing techniques aide in giving tons of variety to your session. You would think that since bridals are just one pretty lady in a dress, we would run out of ideas. But the simplicity actually gives us so much room to try cool new things.

Thank you so much for spending time with me and letting me shoot this beautiful session with you at The Videre Estate, Kennedy!

Click here to see their engagement session at The Videre! And if you can’t get enough, here is another Videre engagement session!