Styled Shoot vs Real Wedding = #Bridegoals?

Weddings

Aug 20

You will often see absolutely amazing, jaw droppingly gorgeous pictures on Instagram and think” that’s it - those are my #bridegoals “ But do you know whether those images you are seeing are from a real life wedding or a styled shoot? Do you know the difference between the two?

Whilst we have been filming and photographing weddings for over 20 years, styled shoots were a mystery to us as we have never had the ‘need’ to shoot for wedding content as we have so many years and hundreds of weddings to grab content from to show off what we do.

However…

We have recently been invited to be involved in 2 styled shoots which were incredibly fun to work on, and we met and worked with the most fabulously talented team of wedding suppliers. All local Berkshire and Surrey wedding suppliers, it was a great fun experience and we made some lovely new friends in the industry. The BIG difference we found was for a styled shoot we had all the time in the world to stop and start the action as we saw a story unfolding, and we had the time to change camera settings and ensure perfection. Of course, on a wedding day, you don't quite have the same time, there is a schedule and time restraints, the weather may not play nice, and the day literally does fly by so fast!

We met Kerry of AB Event Hire through an instagram wedding supplier group and she organised a couple of styled shoots whilst we were all still suffering the shock and loss of all our wedding bookings from Covid19. The idea was to keep excited about the wedding industry and to support one another with team work… as the age old saying goes - TEAM WORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK (and in the case of weddings during the pandemic - keeps the dream alive!) Kerry organised a “Lock Down Garden Party” and we were treated with cakes from the incredibly talented Erica from Iced Innovations and Eleanor from The MapleWood Bakery, the most beautiful sprays of flowers from Ashleigh of Tangerine and Green Florists, exquisite hand designed invitations from Flamboyant Invites, out of this world event styling from Imy and her mom, Lynn from Forever and a Day Events, and of course all the tables and chairs and cutlery and crockery and pretty tea sets and charger plates and glassware and punch bowls (and the list goes on) that you could possibly dream up for your big day by AB Event Hire.

We often work with other photographers when we are filming weddings, (and sometimes wedding photographers can be a little egocentric!!), but we found working with the fabulous Denise Winter an absolute dream - everyone simply worked as a team and had so much fun doing so!

On a styled shoot, generally speaking, the bride and groom are models and models know how to pose and position their bodies in front of a camera - and for the average bride and groom this is definitely not always the case! We always suggest a pre-wedding shoot or engagement session with your photographer before your wedding day so you know what to expect, and get comfortable with the poses in front of the camera!

Styled Shoots are a great selling tool for wedding suppliers as they showcase the very best wedding products, wedding dresses, shoes, cakes, flowers and event styling, and are very popular with wedding blogs as they are a great source of inspiration for brides and grooms planning their weddings. But, as a word of advice, don’t set your entire dream wedding on them - I would imagine if you had a budget with the sky as the limit and about 4 hours set aside for photography, you probably could, but ensure, when picking your wedding photographer that your expectations aren’t set on styled shoots and rather on real wedding examples. (the clue will be in whether there are guests in the background!!)

These images are from the wonderful garden tea party set up we did in Kerry’s garden - all images by Denise Winter - I will be sharing the styled wedding shoot in a new blog soon!

Can you tell the difference between a styled shoot and a real wedding? We’d love to know!