Most of the time you are shooting at a wedding it is essentially done in photojournalism style. You are documenting the day for the couple. it is highly unlikely that the couple will print any of the images taken during most of the day.

The formals are the exemption. These are the images that will be printed and therefore need to be of the highest quality. 

Traditionally, the formals have been shot after the wedding and prior to the reception starting. This doesn’t involve taking a couple away from the venue for at least an hour and possibly longer. In a lot of situations, the wedding and reception venue are not in the same facility. Therefore, separation naturally occurs.

In the case of Ollie and Jess, the reception was being held in the hall next to the church. They also did not want to spend time away from their guests after the ceremony. So they elected to have their formals shot before the ceremony. This is a relatively modern trend which is growing in popularity.

One of the key shots that you do try to get is referred to as “first look”. This is capturing the look on the groom’s face when he first sees the bride. We went to extra steps to ensure that we could control when Ollie could see Jess including the use of a blindfold.

The ceremony was scheduled to commence at 2 pm so we planned to start the formals at noon. This allowed us 90 minutes. We could travel to the locations we had chosen. We wrapped the shoot up before guests started to arrive.

One of the skills that is needed as a wedding photographer is to be adaptable.  Our beach shooting plans were canceled. The Wellington weather delivered rain and gale force winds.

The backup plan was to shoot all of the formals in the church. It did give me the opportunity to incorporate the church organ into the shot.

In fact the closest we got to out was me standing in the rain with the party in the doorway.

With not having to travel anywhere we finished the formals ahead of time. This gave everyone a good break before the ceremony started.

We will cover the ceremony in the next post.