M! Studios Blog

Katie is such a wonderful young woman. I can not believe she is already a senior. Her session was so easy and fun to shoot!

So I saw that this weeks challenge was Over My Head and this was the first picture that came to my mind! I had so much fun during this session! Her husband is a pilot so what better way to take bridal portraits!!

We had so much fun Sunday during this engagement session. I asked Tiffany several questions to get to know them more and tried to incorporate several items. Josh proposed to Tiffany at TWU so we had to start there getting a reenactment of the proposal. We then went out in the country to a friend’s house to shoot the rest of our session. Josh loves old cars and likes to rebuild them so I found a car that he would like. We laughed so hard several times and just had a blast shooting. We could of shot all day as much fun as we were having. Here are a few from the session…It was so hard to narrow down my favorites!

Sherie and Jack are tying the knot in a few weeks at the Scarborough Faire. Since their wedding will be a full Renaissance theme, they wanted to do a western engagement session at the Stockyards. We had fun Saturday morning and several laughs! Jack surprised Sherie around Valentine’s Day with a horseback ride so Jack pulled a few strings and we were able to get a few shots of them on horses. These were a few favorites from our session…

Sarah and Mark are about to walk down the aisle and finally say “I Do”! It has been a long time coming for these two. Once high school sweethearts, went their separate ways then found each other again. These two are truly soul mates!! I had the pleasure of going to Houston to shoot Sarah’s bridals in January. It has been so hard not to post these images, as I have fell in love with them! See her bouquet…that was made by me! I never thought I would be making a bouquet!! Watch out florist!! *Just kidding* I am so not the person for that job!! We shot these at an Episcopal Church that was breathtaking! Beautiful for bridal portraits!!

I have so many images that I like but these would be my top 2!

I have been capturing wedding for several years now and bridal portraits are often looked over by many as “I don’t need those” or “There is no point in these pictures” or “Why do I want to spend extra money on several vendors”. Well, I have had several brides understand why they are important.

Bridal portraits are a trial-run of how you will look on your wedding day. Your wedding day photos will hang on the walls in your house and are the visual memory of the most important day of your life. Why would you not want everything perfect in them? When you set up bridal portraits you need to contract the same vendors that will be performing the services on your wedding day. The stylist that will be doing your hair, the make-up artist that will apply your make-up and the florist that will be crafting your bouquet. Too often I have had brides upset with one of the three.

Examples:

Bride 1 -
I shot her wedding several years ago and she always sticks out in my mind as to why bridals are so important. She had bridals taken and at that point, she hadn’t completely decided on the type of flowers she wanted for her bouquet. She went to the store and purchased flowers and made herself three bouquets to see what she liked best. I shot several images with the different bouquets. She ended up wanting a combination of the flowers. On her wedding day, her florist showed up with a bouquet of a single flower that was not the correct color and didn’t have the other flowers in the bouquet. Having a bride look at her bouquet and break down in tears is not something you want to see on a wedding day.

Bride 2 -
She scheduled bridals and made her appointments. She came to the studio after her hair and make-up and hated it!! She also had her florist make a small bouquet for her pictures since she wanted a cascading bouquet for her wedding. Now, the flowers she chose were amazing and the bridesmaid’s bouquets looked perfect, however, the bride’s was entirely too big for her frame and had such a small handle, that she couldn’t even hold it. We had to add extra support for her to make it down the aisle with it.

Bride 3 -
She said one of the common phrases above and declined bridals. On her wedding day, she was an hour late to the church because of not being happy with her hair. They had to fix it and it took awhile for it to be prefect! She was very agitated with running late and didn’t really get to enjoy herself before the ceremony.

I’m not saying anything bad about these type of vendors because I know several that are wonderful to work with. When it’s such an important day and you want everything “picture perfect”, not every person will have the same vision as you do. You see yourself every day and know what you like and what you don’t. I can say that in the first two situations, that the bouquet Bride 1 got was pretty and the hair of Bride 2, I thought looked good. BUT it doesn’t matter what I think as the photographer. It’s going to be what the bride thinks about how she looks in her pictures.

Even my own bridal’s, I changed my hair and flowers for the wedding day. I decided to have my hair up and when I looked at the pictures, I didn’t like how I looked with it all up. I had my florist make a bouquet that I saw in a magazine which consisted of red and yellow flowers. I didn’t like the look of the yellow so I changed them to white and was much happier with white.

I’m also not trying to say this to get people to spend more money on their pictures. If a bride doesn’t want them and completely trust her vendors, I still tell them to do a trial run with hair and make-up and have someone take a few pictures to make sure it’s what you want. These three vendors have all told me that once they apply a bride’s make-up or style her hair or create the bouquet, it’s much more easy to do it a second time and typically quicker than the first. As the photographer, it’s nice to see you in your dress and know the details (hair, make-up, flowers, veil, train length, etc) to help make your photographs better.

All vendors want a happy bride and not one in tears unless they are tears of joy!

Zshaynelle and Keith exchanged vows last month. With the weather unpredictable, they had a beautiful sunny day and snow still on the ground. A Valentine’s celebration of love, faith and joining of two hearts.

A special thanks to James for helping me with this wedding!!!!

WOW!!! That was fun! Chris and I are beat but we had fun meeting all these new brides!! We really had an amazing booth so we know that helped!! I won a booth design for Wed Designs and they really designed us a great booth. With the help and my talented father, he took this design and constructed the booth with some minor twist! My dad is an phenomenal contractor and puts so much heart into everything he builds. So a big THANKS to the designers and my daddy!! We donated a door prize that was given away during the fashion show and also a giveaway at our booth. So a big congratulations goes to Kristin Smith who is getting married this September. She was the lucky winner of our drawing!!

Thanks to all the brides that came out and helped raise over $800 for a medical scholarship!!

This week’s challenge is…”I Wanna Dance”

I have so many funny and some crazy pictures of dancing but this picture has always stuck out in my mind. This was during the Father-Daughter dance and I was in tears as I captured this moment. Her dad got so emotional dancing with his baby girl. The emotion in his eyes, can still bring a tear to my eye.

I came across this blog and fell in love with it! They have photo challenges every week so I thought I would start entering them.

This week’s theme is all about kisses…

I just love this little ring bearer, Bransen, giving the bride a kiss!