Posing and Directing for Awesome Wedding Photos
You just got married, and you’re walking down the ceremony aisle towards the drinks and cocktail food in the distance. If you thrive on fun times with friends, the last thing you’d want is a photographer to tell you and your crazy wedding party friends to stand and pose like a bunch of statues for an hour. Jenna and Rob’s wedding at St. Clements Castle in Portland, CT was a perfect example of my approach with photographing a bride, groom, and their best friends in the wedding party!
Of course you have to do the typical kissing pose that every photographer does. Can’t go wrong with that. Have the couple at a pretty decent angle, with sunlight raking across a landscape, we’re golden. But don’t think that once you’re done kissing that you have to walk to the next spot to do some posed photos. WRONG!!!
As Jenna and Rob learned on my engagement session, I’ll snap away as they happily walk towards a direction I’m pointing. A lot of times, just the thought of being finally married to your soulmate is enough to keep you smilin’. But to keep those smiles and spice up a walk with some laughs, sometimes we have to just be fun and goofy, like bumping hips from side to side as you’re walking. 
And I love to just keep moving around, shooting at different angles to get natural “poses” while the couple is in movement, and capturing different angles. The more variety of portraits you have, the more options for the right image for your walls in your home.
And if you have a flowy, beautiful dress like Jenna wore on her wedding day, you can have lots of fun just enjoying the dress, taking in the beauty, elegance, and happiness that is just flowing in a wedding dress. Jenna’s dress was a WTOO dress from The Wedding Embassey in Watertown, CT.
Posing a Wedding Party
As for taking pictures of the wedding party, I always do the groomsmen on one side, and bridesmaids on the bride’s side, formal, smiling, looking at the camera. But my favorites shots are when the bride and groom gets released to walk towards the camera, and sometimes kiss when everyone else cheers on. Then after this shot, I separate the bride and groom so that the bride basically is walking 6 ft or more away from the bridesmaids, and the groom in front of the guys as well. Then I take fast shots of the bride/groom in focus with wedding party blurred in the back. This is great and takes just a couple seconds!
After shots like the one above, then I’ll have the groomsmen all stand together, or the bridesmaids come into a group hug around the bride. I love shots like these, and if you look around more on my blog you’ll see a lot of images like this where everyone is just having fun and smiles come really easy!
It’s great when the wedding party is comfortable around you and they just feel free to have fun and enjoy the day. The sooner we get done with wedding party photos, the more time you have to hang out with your besties, eat, and dance. The day is so short and flies by so fast!
