Cinderella’s Happily Ever After: Behind the Scenes Photo Shoot

With all good fairy tales lets start the blog with…

Once upon a time, there was this wicked awesome photographer named Karrie. She had this wonderful idea of wanting to incorporate different wedding details into a styled shoot. One of which was to have a blue wedding dress versus the classic white. From a mutual point of contact, she reached out to me where I instantly feel in love!

Being a Disney fanatic myself, I felt the shoot would have more of a Cinderella vibe. Now Karrie specializes in having vibrant and moody photos, so during the planning I thought it would be a nice contrast to have softer colors. Lately I have been obsessing with wedding colors of blues, pinks and greens.

It was VERY important to showcase a love story. Erin with Words Made Semple added envelope inserts and a detail card of the famous love song “Because You Loved Me” by Celion Dion. When designing your invitation suite, you don’t have to have bold expensive pieces to make your suite memorable. You can use different inks and color paper to show the important wedding details.

If I haven’t made it clear before I will make it abundantly clear now. I AM ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED WITH DETAILED PHOTOS!!! I can’t get over how such small details showcase a wedding to its fullest. Let me say I really wish more planners and brides would take the time to add little pieces just for these photos. During the planning process a bride will spend so much time deciding how invitations, menus, name cards and save the dates should look that they are often forgotten. Add small pieces of vintage ribbon with wedding flowers to make these images pop. When planning ask your photographer if they have detailed backdrops or if not please provide your own. Don’t forget to use images of your favorite accessories of shoes and diamonds. Did you see the tiara for a wedding band? #goals

To keep this fairy tale alive, I wanted to add romantic details to the tabletop decorations. Taper candles are a big love of mine; however, most venues will not allow for you to have an open flame. The electric or better known as dripless candles work great for weddings especially if you are wanting to recreate the setting. To clarify, for the photo shoot it was fine to have an open flame considering the flame was only for a short period. Tapers were placed on various heights of old books to create the staggering look. Remember love stories are a “tale as old as time.” I wanted the books to be the details versus a bunch of flowers. Notice there is no flowers but small amounts of greenery going across the center of table. Garland can be terribly expensive so Victoria with Bright Eyed Blooms used left over greenery to place around candles and books.

The table was six feet and enough to show for a place setting of four. Instead of using folded or chavari chairs, we used a bench with two vintage tufton upholstered chairs. I do love chargers under the dinner plates but I didn’t think it was necessary; I wanted simple and subtle details. So I used a clear glass plate, a linen napkin folded for a menu card, disposable silverware and tall stem champagne flutes.

Now I feel this can sound contradicting but hear me out. I love having colors for table linens instead of your basic colors of white, ivory and black. I also really love having table runners but I wanted to add different details besides having one table runner going across the table. The runners used in images are called cheesecloth and often come in short measurements where multiple are used to create the draped images. Now using a basic color for the table linen, I feel the cheesecloth was able to show more. I used multiple pieces of the cheesecloth to weave throughout the table to go across the table vertically and horizontally.

When planning photo shoots one of the hardest things is finding a couple who is off during the week days. Most venues will not allow for you to do a photoshoot during the weekend considering those are wedding days. For me to find models I find it to be easier by posting on Facebook Groups. One of my favorites is Dallas Girl Gang. It just so happens the bride model Tiffany is a “friendor.” (Vendor/Friend…. Get it!) Long story short, she had been searching to do a photoshoot to celebrate five years of marriage with her husband Jared. Needless to say it felt right to have their love story in the images. They were able to reflect the love they have for each other be divine while looking AH-MAZING! They were able to get photos taken for FREE to celebrate their wedding anniversary. **Side note, not only is Tiffany a stunning model but she is a rocking awesome DJ!!!

To accomplish this look it was all thanks to Tease to Please. For hair details, I didn’t want to do an updo as I felt it would take away from the dress. So having full volume curls was perfect. Not to mention most brides don’t do just curls anymore! The makeup has soft pink eye shadow with a dewy highlighted finish. Tiffany did such a wonderful job with modeling the gown as it fit perfectly for her! The gown had an outer layer of blue sparkles shimmering the entire shoot. In my eyes, she was Cinderella.

BIBBIDY, BOBBODY BOO all the vendors and models took the vision of the shoot to make it come true. Thank you to the many Fairy Godmother’s: (Link will connect to vendors Instagram)