Couple Wedding Portraits – How to take great couple portraits

General

As a wedding photographer, photographing weddings is only part of this job I love. What I also love is meeting up with couples in client meetings and hearing about their plans for their wedding day. It is a joy to hear an excited bride filling you in on all the special details and touches that will make their day unique to them and I always feel lucky to be part of that, like I have been let in on a brilliant secret! Its great to get to meet such different and lovely people. Its funny but when you talk to someone about their wedding you feel like you have been friends for ages and you know if you can chat in a relaxed way then the wedding day is going to be a great day – that you can interact with the couple in a way that will produce beautiful relaxed and natural images because they know and trust you.

wedding photographer waterford

I meet with couples every week and this week I even took a trip down memory lane! As I met with Mary and we were chatting about where she was from, we discovered we had something in common – we went to the same primary school and I had even been in her house many years ago!! Its a small world. I met with six couples this week and one question that kept coming up was the best time to take the couple portraits, so I decided to write a post about it.

wedding pictures bunratty

I have two schools of thought on when I like to sneak away with the couple alone for some couple portraits of just the two of them – but this can change depending on the time of year (and the available light) and the all-important weather. Sometimes on the wedding day the best-laid plans need to be revised when it has been raining all day and just as you come out of the church the sun comes out – then is the time to act!!

All things considered though I like to take the couple portrait images shortly after the drinks reception begins (I feel that it is important for the bride and groom to enjoy a glass of champagne with their friends and family first, after all everyone is there to see them!) or we do the couple portraits in the 30 minutes when the guests have been called for dinner and are making their way down to the reception room. On both these occasions I have learned that the couple is at their most relaxed, which makes a huge difference to me as the photographer. And it is crucial to me that my couples look and feel natural in front of the camera.

I start each session the same, explaining that I don’t expect my couple to pose like models, its my job to make them look fabulous! That they should forget that I am even there, but not to talk too much as every picture will look like they are deep in conversation! We then just chat and walk around their venue stopping along the way for photos and then casually moving on to the next location (I will have scouted out the best spots before the day) – no pressure, no stress, no drama! This leads to beautifully relaxed looking images with a relaxed looking couple. And what’s best of all is that the couple can return to their friends and family and enjoy the party!

It is important to me to make each session a unique reflection of the couples love and the client experience is even better for it!

Tanya Colclough at Eden Photography, your wedding photographer for Waterford, Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny and all of Ireland