Erica M Photography »

Meegan is the one responsible for both of our beautiful engagement shoots AND is flying out to New Jersey to photograph our wedding! So, the very least I could do for her in return is take some photos for her new website and blog! Meegan also created an example wedding website with Fred and my stories and engagement photos, it’s absolutely beautiful! If you haven’t seen it yet check it out here! I’m so thankful to have this girl in my life! Can’t wait to see these up on her site!

I love this one below on the right, whenever I made Meegan laugh she closed her eyes and looked away, so cute :) I love seeing how people all laugh differently, such joy!

Her hubby Chris and son Aydin met us out in this beautiful wheat field for a few updated family photos!

Wedding days should be full of emotion. Wedding days should not be stressful. But let’s face reality, they are. This is why I ask all my clients if they are interested in doing a first look. The first look adds so much beautiful emotion and happiness to a wedding day and alleviates SO much stress, it’s hard to know where to start raving about it!

Well let’s start from the beginning…from the ancient tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other before the ceremony. Many people don’t realize the reason for this was because the bride and groom had NEVER seen each other before the ceremony! It was so the groom, quite frankly, wouldn’t split! Luckily we’ve progressed and in our modern society, marriages (for the most part) aren’t arranged. We CHOOSE to marry the one we love. And we can choose to see them before the ceremony!

Whenever I photograph a couple that chooses not to see each other before the ceremony I try to put myself in their shoes. The bride walks down the aisle to her soon to be husband. They are both completely nervous with all these guests staring at them. The bride reaches the front of the church. Her father is standing between her and her future husband. Her father gives her away and she moves to stand next to her husband. They don’t touch. They don’t talk. They can’t tell each other how amazingly beautiful the other looks. They can’t tell the other how incredibly excited they are to be getting married. They can’t hug, they can’t kiss, they can’t embrace. They can’t have a moment to themselves. After the ceremony is over they are immediately approached by all their loving relatives to be congratulated. This continues into the reception and throughout the night. They never have a moment just to themselves. I’ve been told by many people that your wedding day goes by in such a big blur, that sometimes it’s hard to remember everything. If you do a first look you have time scheduled to slow down and appreciate what this day is all about…being madly in love with the person you’re about to marry!

Some people are concerned that a first look takes away from the emotion of the bride walking down the aisle and being given away by her father. It doesn’t. The bride being escorted by her father creates a completely different kind of emotion. I see grooms choked up in a totally different way than they were when they saw their bride for the first time. Your groom is also prone to have a more natural reaction as you approach him – he’s calm because he has already seen you…instead of being nervous while seeing you for the first time with the stress of 200 guests staring at him!

So how does the first look work? After you are both all done up and dressed for the wedding, we position the groom facing away from where the bride will appear behind him. She approaches him while we capture the happy anticipation on his face. She usually touches (or grabs!) his arm and turns him around. And we the photographers capture, from a distance, all the emotion! You two get to hug, embrace, and savor this moment as long as you want…without the pressure of your guests watching you. You get to talk, laugh, cry (and reapply your makeup before the ceremony!) and we’re there to capture it all!

Another reason to do the first look is that it reduces stress so much! Not only will you be less nervous walking down the aisle, it makes the day run much more smoothly. After we do a first look we do portraits of the bride and groom together. We have plenty of time for creative portraits that you will treasure forever! Then we get the whole bridal party together and do all of the formal photos with them, and then formal photos with your immediate family. We stop taking photos at least 30 minuets before the ceremony starts so you can tuck yourselves away, usually separately, without being seen by guests. The only formal photos we have left after the ceremony are any large family photos, which take about 30 minutes. When you do a first look everyone gets to the reception quickly and your guests aren’t sitting there waiting for two hours because guess what, we did all the photos before the ceremony! Of course it is possible to do all the photos after the ceremony but they are always rushed, which means as a photographer I’m not as creative as I could be, and you’re not getting the photos you could be! You’d also be getting photos taken when you’d rather be celebrating with your guests, which stresses you out!

I’m getting married in August and my fiancé and I are doing a first look so we can take a pause in the busy day to slow down and appreciate each other, to be able to say “I love you!” To make sure we hold onto the memories of seeing each other for the first time without being incredibly nervous. We’re also doing a first look because taking the time to get great photos is so incredibly important to us – photos are the only tangible thing you have from your wedding after it’s over! I can’t wait to share my first hand experience of doing the first look as a bride! Both of my April couples, Catie & Michael and Rebecca & Miles, have also decided to do a first look and I could not be more excited!!!

These images illustrate how a first look works. This is Brittany and Kevin’s wedding I second shot with Meegan Weaver at the Wildcatter Ranch in Graham Texas! Now that I’ve had my turn on the soapbox, I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on doing a first look!

After the first look we are able to spend time to get beautiful portraits of the bride and groom!

I love to cook and bake. It is, no joke, a huge part of my life. (Doing the dishes on the other hand is usually Fred’s job.) So, I am always assessing my kitchen “situation.” Our kitchen consist of: dishes given to me by a coworker before I left for collage that were otherwise going to goodwill, my Mom’s hand me down pots and pans (given when she replaced them with new ones), and a random assortment of cheap kitchen tools Fred bought from Walmart when he was living here without me as a bachelor. A few weeks ago I was scooping out some flour to make pancakes and the handle of my plastic measuring cup just snapped off. I shook my head in disappointment at myself for buying cheap things that break! So little by little things are getting replaced…and yes I know it’s tacky to talk about…but I AM excited to make a wedding registry full of beautiful well made kitchen things!

While I was wedding planning on the East Coast, I made sure to take a day trip into NYC and visit the International Center of Photography where I interned the summer of ‘07. Okay, the fact that I had a very old gift card to the museum store may have had something to do with the pit stop. I fully expected to come out with a new book to add to my coffee table collection, but my eyes fell upon a spoon rest. Yes fellow photographers, be jealous!