Tips for Brides

1  From Guild member Mike Brown of Lancastrian Imaging:

Make sure you can sit down in your dress (makes for better photographs)

Allow time for the photographs - they are your best memory of the wedding day. Give the photographer time to work professionally.

Keep top up makeup to hand.

Make sure your bridesmaids know their role and don’t leave the arranging of the dress to the photographer.

Recognise that amateur photographers working around or over (sometimes on) the professional canl degrade the final pictures.

Learn how to stand properly - your photographer will advise on the most flattering pose for photographs.

Find the best way of holding the bouquet - try not to hold it like an ice cream cornet!

Remember to have a good time.

If your children are going to the wedding ask someone else look after them.

Think how much the wedding will cost and what proportion will go towards photography - the most lasting product. Is it good value?

Is your photographer qualified?

Is your photographer insured?

2  SHOULD YOU ASK A FRIEND TO PHOTOGRAPH YOUR WEDDING?

Here at the Guild, we were asked for some tips on photographing a friend's wedding by a student of Art and Design. Here was our advice:

It's a huge responsibility to take on someone's wedding photography if you don't know what you are doing, so you really need to make it clear to your friend that the photographs you take will not be those she would expect from an experienced photographer. It's not only the camera work you need to study, but also the people handling skills and knowing how to pose them to make the best of them. You have very little time in which to study these things. But if your friend is quite happy to put her trust in you, decide between you a minimum of groups and who she would like in them, what other shots she would like included, and then you just need to control the crowd - the ushers are sometimes quite good at this. This is not a subject you can learn from tips - it really is a serious thing to do, being a very special day! There is an art to making people look their best, using the light and surroundings to best effect, and delivering a beautiful album at the end of it all. Please make it clear to your friend that wedding photography is not as easy as it looks!

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