What happens during a first look is that we’ll stage it so that the photographer can capture the moment when the bride and groom first sees each other.  It’s very touching, romantic, and takes place way before the ceremony.

I know there are plenty of traditionalists who are completely against this: “Seeing each other before the wedding is bad luck.”  But where does the tradition even come from? Most people do not even know the reasons behind the traditions they follow. Maybe if you know the reasoning behind this tradition, you’ll feel more comfortable going against it.

The tradition stems from the days of arranged marriages. For fear of the groom running if his bride were “ugly”, the bride and groom were not to see each other until the bride walked all the way down the aisle. Obviously, most weddings are no longer arranged these days.

I think the advantages of doing a first look completely outweigh the disadvantages.  As my friend Chelsea Nicole likes to explain in her consultations, “nothing can take away the moment when you walk down the aisle and see each other for the first time”. So even if you decide to do a first look, it is still an overwhelming experience full of emotion as you walk down the aisle!

I honestly find that the couples who decide to do the “first look” are a lot more at ease for the few hours before the wedding ceremony.  They can spend quality time together before the wedding and do not have to miss out on the cocktail hour! And, they usually never regret that decision.

If bridal portraits are important, I suggest keeping an open mind and considering the first look. Your photographer will love the time to take your bridal portraits and you’ll thank your photographer once you see your photos!

Here’s a series of photos from one of my amazing photographer friends Chelsea Nicole.  I love the playfulness of these photos!

So did you do a first look? Why or why not?

Photos: Chelsea Nicole

Head over to Chelsea’s blog for her recent work. I promise you’ll love what you see.

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website * Email: juliet@greenorchidevents.com

Name: Megan Ruth Stay (You can call me Meg)
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Company Name: MegRuth Photography
Number of Years in Business: 2
Website: megruth.com
Blog: blog.megruth.com
Twitter: @megruth (are you sensing a pattern here?)

How did you get started in wedding photography?

I shot my first wedding when I was twelve, my dad gave me his 35mm film camera to photograph at my sister’s wedding. It was then that I fell in love with photography. I took classes through high school and went on to get my BFA in photography in college. I moved to NYC and started my career on the production end of the industry, but I missed photographing. So when my husband and I moved to Vegas I started my own business.

I absolutely love being a part of one of the happiest days in two people’s lives. I love that I get to share those moments with them and allow those memories to remain forever. It really is one of the things that brings me the most joy in my life.

What did you do prior to this?

In New York I was a studio manager for a food photographer. It was a delicious job. A little too delicious for my figure…

If you didn’t do wedding photography for a living what would you be doing instead?
I love what I do but secretly would love to be a baker in my own shop. I’m thinking mostly breads. I’d have some great photos of my bread, that’s for sure!
I’m fairly certain that I couldn’t give up my great brides and grooms though. I have way too much fun.

What are some of your hobbies?

I love baking. I always said if there was one thing I could eat the rest of my life it would be sour dough bread. Love it. Sewing is another passion, I’m working on my second quilt. It’s not as hard as you think. House projects are another fave, my poor husband has a never ending “honey-do” list. But I promise I help!

What is the craziest wedding experience you’ve ever had?

I was so fortunate that my, now, friends Packy and Anna found me and trusted me to document their wedding adventure when I first started my business. They got married ON the Hoover Dam two years ago at 7am. It was already about 110 degrees. “The Dam Wedding” was a dam good time.

What is the best wedding experience you’ve ever had?

There is always something special about each wedding I photograph but this past May I was able to be the photographer for my friend Amy’s wedding who I’ve known since I was six. We were roommates all through college and she means the world to me. Being able to capture the love between her and her husband, Warren, was a blessing.

What is your inspiration?

One of my greatest inspirations is Dorethea Lang. She was a photog-journalist during the turmoil of The Great Depression for the FSA. She went all over the country documenting the human suffering while making every ounce beautiful. Some people criticized her for making her images happen but I am a firm believer that you can direct a subject in a way that allows them to be themselves and get a specific message to the viewer while maintaining your integrity.

Photographers should know their photographic history; there are so many amazing predecessors out there!

Name an exotic location you’d like to visit soon.

The next place on my list is Spain. I want to go to Barcelona and Madrid and just meander the country in a convertible while eating scrumptious food. Doesn’t it just sound blissful?

Why do your clients choose you over some of your competitors?

The bride and groom are shadowed almost the entire day by their photographer, you want to like them. I think that a lot of people hire me not only because I produce images they’ll love to look at and share but because they’ll have fun with me. I’m a bit of a ham at times which I think people find fairly amusing.

What is the best piece of advice you can offer a bride on their wedding day?

Make sure you slow down and enjoy the little moments. By nature I’m a people watcher so being a photographer allows me to do that for a living, which is amazing. There are so many wonderful things that happen at weddings. The looks between sisters, or the mother of the groom. Enjoy all those tender moments and I’ll do my best to capture them for you.

Anything else interesting you’d like to share?

My favorite camera to photograph with is a handmade wooden 4×5 view camera. I love photographing with Type 55 Polaroid. It’s so dreamy.

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website * Email: juliet@greenorchidevents.com

How did you get started in photography?

Ingrid had to take PHOTO 101 as a prerequisite for her BFA. Upon seeing her first black and white print magically appear in the developer tray, she immediately feel in love with photography. The next day she changed her fine art emphasis from painting to photography.

David helped assist Ingrid when Images by Ingrid was just beginning. He found a creative outlet for his unique eye of angles and composition. He enjoys capturing moments, shooting the must get traditional wedding pictures and the challenge of creating dramatic effects with off camera flash.

What did you do prior to this?

Ingrid went to school and worked in food and beverage. It took 8 years and three colleges in three states to get her BA in fine art.

David was a custom picture framer and currently is a bar/wine manager for a fine dining restaurant here in Vegas in which has  served for 13 years. He is also part of the 9% of the Vegas population who was born and raised here

How do you describe your style?

Documentary coverage is an entirely different approach to wedding photography. Ingrid believes her photographs represent much more that just a tired fad, but as documentarian,  it is her responsibility to capture each moment exactly as it happened. She does not intervene or interrupt  the moment already taking place.
She feels the mastery of this style is very easy to claim and advertise, but rarely is it achieved.

Her lighting preference is soft natural light. Her portraits of her couples reflect fun, happy moments at times and others a deeper revealing side. Her passion is to create an emotional response from the viewer through her images.

David is more a traditionalist. He enjoys capturing the must get images at weddings.  He is a master of off camera flash and captures the most amazing pictures of  the bride and groom with Vegas sunsets. He sees angles and photographs them differently then anyone else. Clients and venders love his detail shots of rings, food, locations,

If you didn’t do photography for a living what would you be doing instead?

Ingrid would be a life coach or chef/restaurateur. She has  created  the life of her dreams and would love to help others achieve their dream life too. Also, Ingrid is too good of a cook, this is why they have to go to the gym regularly. She feels with 14 years in F&B and cooking skills she could create an amazing  restaurant.

David would be wine & food critic. David has been in F&B for 13 years and is currently a bar manager during the week at a fine dining restaurant in Vegas. Ironically every time they go dining he is already playing the part.

What are some of your hobbies? Attending live sporting events, concerts, traveling, sailing dining out, spending quality time with family, plus any activities that create memories and experiences.

What is the craziest wedding experience you’ve ever had? For Ingrid and David each wedding is crazy, fun and unique.

A crazy wedding memory for Ingrid was a wedding at Lake Mead. The ceremony and reception was on an island in the middle of the lake. All the guests, food, décor, had to be boated to the location. The ceremony was under a beautifully decorated tent and the reception was held on top of the houseboats.  There were Hawaiian dancers, fire breathers, and a late night bon fire. Since night travel on the lake is dangerous all the guests and venders had to stay on the island and spend the night in houseboats. It was a blast.

David’s craziest wedding memory was a helicopter wedding to Grand Canyon. They were both terrified, and excited about the prospect. This was when helicopter crashes at the Grand Canyon seemed to be a monthly event. The plan was for Ingrid and David to fly with the couple to the Grand Canyon for the ceremony. Unfortunately, on the ride out, a thunderstorm came in and they had to turn back. It was defiantly an experience being airborne with thunder and lighting following you back to the airport. The best part was David and Ingrid met up with the couple the next day and once again flew to the Grand Canyon.

What is the best wedding experience you’ve ever had?

For David and Ingrid every wedding is the best experience. They love their couples and give their heart and soul at every wedding.

What is your inspiration? Ingrid’s and David inspiration is their clients and the fun, happy, and unexpected moments of the day.  Each wedding and couple is unique. To photograph the day with that important fact in mind is their inspiration.

Name an exotic location you’d like to visit soon. Tahiti, Greek Isles, Barcelona, Estonia, Serengeti, Thailand, Egypt, opening day at the new Marlins baseball bark in 2012, New Years eve in Times Square, 2012 Summer Olympics in London,  sail the Caribbean, race car driving lessons, drive the autobahn, wine tours in Italy and France,  and these are just to name a few.

Why do your clients choose you over some of your competitors?

The blend of documentary and traditional photography. Ingrid and David create timeless images, not fads of the moment.

What is the best piece of advice you can offer a bride and groom on their wedding day?

Hire professionals you are comfortable with, let them do their job, and just relax and enjoy your day.

Anything else interesting you’d like to share?

In 2012 Ingrid and David plan on taking the year to photograph outside of Vegas as much as possible. Their goal is to not only shooting weddings all over the world but visit and photograph past couples.  They hope to create a fine art series their 2012 adventures.

They love their job and hopefully it shows in their images.

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website * Email: juliet@greenorchidevents.com

Name: Kristen Joy
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Company Name: Kristen Joy Photography
Number of Years in Business: 4 years
Website: www.kristenjoyphoto.com
Blog: www.kristenjoyphotoblog.com

How did you get started in photography? I started in high school when my Mom bought me a nice camera for a birthday, I didn’t put it down. I was blessed to meet an amazing photographer named David Burke in Pittsburgh, who took me under his wing and taught me everything I know. If I had not met Dave I would still be taking pictures, but without direction.

What did you do prior to this? I got paid the big bucks being a stay at home Mommy.

If you didn’t do photography for a living what would you be doing instead? I would be sliding down slides and running laps at the park with my two beautiful children.

What are some of your hobbies? I love being outside hiking, running, playing sports. I have a great time playing around with my kids, they think of the fun stuff and I get to play along.

What is the craziest wedding experience you’ve ever had? The craziest wedding I have experienced was one last August. In the beginning the group seemed very calm and far from wild, at the end of the night all the men in the room were in the boxers wearing their ties around their heads chanting some college mantra, I didn’t know whether to close my eyes or keep photographing… I kept photographing of course.

What is the best wedding experience you’ve ever had? The best wedding I have experienced was my twin sister Kim’s wedding, I took a few getting ready shots of her, but after that I was in the wedding. It was perfect and meant more then anything for me to be there.

What is your inspiration? Having been able to travel a lot with my family and see the world has really inspired me. Its one thing to see pictures in a magazine and its another to experience it.

Name an exotic location you’d like to visit soon. Greece, my parents just went there for their wedding anniversary, I edited all 2000 photos that my Mom took there, now I want to go there and experience it too.

Why do your clients choose you over some of your competitors? A majority of my clients choose me because we get along so good, they like my style of photography, but a lot of it comes down to our personalities matching more then anything else.

What is the best piece of advice you can offer a bride and groom on their wedding day? Always have enough time during the wedding day to take photos of just the two of you. Its a great time to relax and be alone and you will be pleased in the end with more options and great photos.

Anything else interesting you’d like to share? I’ve been blessed to photograph so many beautiful weddings and people. Thank you Juliet for your hard work and beautiful blog for not just brides and grooms but photographers too.

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website * Email: juliet@greenorchidevents.com

Name: Steven Fogarty
Location: Las Vegas, NV and Park City, Utah
Company Name: FogartyWeddings
Number of Years in Business: 3 as a wedding photographer
Website: www.FogartyWeddings.com
Blog: www.Facebook.com/FogartyFOTO
Twitter: www.Twitter.com/FogartyFOTO

How did you get started in wedding photography?

After a successful career in computers and email, I decided to learn from the masters how they make such gorgeous photos. Since then I’ve studied with some of the most amazing photographers alive, including: Joe McNally and Matthew Jordan Smith and Denis Reggie, the father of wedding photojournalism. They’ve all influenced my style tremendously.

What did you do prior to this?

For the U.S Congress in Washington, DC, I designed and managed the LAN email system that replaced their 20 year-old mainframe email system. I then accepted a position with Novell / WordPerfect, which brought me to Utah. With 3 friends I co-founded an Internet email business, that we sold in 1999. We just moved to Vegas a couple of weeks ago.

If you didn’t do photography for a living what would you be doing instead?

I’m kind of a history geek. One of my great pleasures is listening to educational tapes on very long drives and discussing history with friends. I would love to teach history.

What are some of your hobbies?

I love to snowboard really fast and steep with my peers, and to ski with my children. Scuba diving is the easiest way to leave the planet. And I love to read, mostly geeky history and policy stuff. I love wrestling with my 4 boys.

What is the craziest wedding experience you’ve ever had?

It was snowing really hard the morning of Courtney’s wedding in Aspen. She was distraught, tearfully wondering why her mountain-top wedding was to be ruined. We reminded her that these morning mountain storms are often very short and pass quickly. The clouds broke, her wedding was full of sunshine. Everyone was happy (and very relieved!) Her photos are gorgeous!

What is the best wedding experience you’ve ever had?

I loved photographing Rachael & Evan’s simple Salt Lake City wedding just before he shipped off for a one year tour of duty in Afghanistan. He is the crew chief on an Apache helicopter. Photographing Nicole & Travis at the Paiute Golf Resort was such a blast because Nicole didn’t stop smiling the whole day – it was clearly one of the happiest days of her life. And photographing Jane and Seth at Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah was absolutely gorgeous on that stunning fall mountain day. Russians know how to party!

What is your inspiration?
While it sounds corny, I honestly believe that wedding photography is the most important, the most challenging, and the most rewarding photography I do. I am very grateful that in my work I am able to create things of such beauty that are so timelessly valuable to my brides.

Name an exotic location you’d like to visit soon.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around the world more than once. Of the 17 countries I have visited, I still remember India for its rich, ancient culture, incredible cuisine, and extraordinary contrasts, like the 3 men walking arm-in-arm down the street, one shirtless and dressed in a traditional dhoti, one dressed in a western business suit, and the third wearing a fusion of the two. Emerging wealth juxtaposed next to striking poverty amid ancient culture, and sensory overload. I would love to return to India with my family.

Why do your clients choose you over some of your competitors?

My clients want strikingly beautiful portraits to hang on their walls, plus lots of discreet photojournalism (PJ) of the day’s real moments, informal photos that will bring back a flood of warm memories with every look. They want a photographer who records the party, without becoming the party. They want the kind of amazing portraits that few photographers can make and are Can’t-Look-Away-GAWJUS. They want traditional portraits of the wedding party. And they want lots of quiet real-moment PJ – the photos I consider the most important of the day.

What is the best piece of advice you can offer a bride and groom on their wedding day?

Don’t worry about the photography! Forget all of your cares for that one day, let the love and attention of everyone who has come so far to wish you well just sink in.

Anything else interesting you’d like to share?

Thank you Juliet for giving me and my family such a warm welcome to Las Vegas!

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website * Email: juliet@greenorchidevents.com

Chris and I photograph, write and layout all of the content for each of our client’s books. Because each couple has its own extraordinary story and each wedding is also extraordinary, all the work we do is completely custom. We don’t use any templates. And, we don’t have any formulas. We really mean it when we say to our clients, “The sky is the limit!”  Our books average between 98-110 pages, and include anywhere from 125-200 photographs. Books are available in a variety of dimensions, but since we shoot full frame, we rarely make a book smaller than 10×10. All of our books are printed on UV coated paper that will stand the test time.

Recently, we bound a book for a husband and wife who show world champion cutting horses, so we had the binding hand tooled in their favorite pattern by a saddler and we commissioned a silversmith to hand forge a decorated sterling silver heart. And, in July we had a client who wanted their book bound in platinum goat skin complete with a layer of 6 inches of fringe, cut from the same leather! Currently, we have a book in the works that will feature one of wedding calligrapher Laura Hooper’s dazzling maps.

Whether a client selects a photo wrap binding or a custom goat leather binding, or something else entirely different, we’ve designed our books to be heirlooms–to be read often and cherished even when read over and over again. It’s a challenge to describe our books because they really are so different from traditional wedding albums.

In addition to the three books each client receives, we always provide a disc of high resolution images and our clients also have the option to order fine art and additional prints and books from us at their convenience.

Promo for TSL Photography from Terrence Lighten on Vimeo.

Check out the story here.

Images for a Cure is a wonderful fundraising event created by Orlando based photographer Kristen Weaver and a team of other photographers. They have joined forces with The Breast Cancer Research Foundation® and participating photographers will contribute 100% of all session fees from October 11, 2009 in support of breast cancer research.

Some additional information pulled off of their website:

Kristine was a referral from the wonderful Tracey Kumer-Moore of Your Las Vegas Wedding Concierge who couldn’t take this wedding because of prior commitments.  Thank you Tracey!

Anyway, Kristine is in the event industry herself as a Senior Event Manager for Marriott International in Los Angeles and wanted to hire a wedding day coordinator so she could just relax this weekend and not feel like she’s working!  Kristine, I’ll make sure we take good care of you!

Photos by Adam Trujillo of Imagine Photography.

To see more photos from Kristine and Aeden’s engagement session, head over to Adam’s blog!

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