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For Brides

Getting Ready Venue

We're Amy & Jordan
We're here to help you take amazing photos, build a successful business and live a beautiful life. We're high school sweethearts, parents of three and teachers at heart. 
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5 Tips to Choose the Perfect Getting Ready Venue_0001

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. Brides make hundreds of decisions to plan the perfect wedding and we want to help them make some of those decisions easier. In this series, we’re opening up about  different parts of the wedding day timeline and uncovering some of the best decisions every bride can make before the wedding to help ensure the day is everything the bride envisions, and maybe even more!  If you’re joining us for the first time, you can catch up here:

1. 5 Tips for Choosing Your Getting Ready Venue
2. 5 Things Every Bride Should Bring to Her Getting Ready Room
3. Is a First Look Right for Me?
4. The First Look from a Groom’s Perspective
5. Building in Time for Bride and Groom Portraits
6. The Three B’s: Bridal Party, Bouquets, & Boutonnieres
7. Making Time for Ceremony and Reception Details
8. Why We LOVE Linens

A venue that matches the vision of your wedding day style will help tell a more cohesive story. Walking into a getting ready room on a wedding day is like walking into a time capsule. Your high school best friend. Your college roommate. Your sister. Your mom. Everyone you love is there. Choosing a space to reflect on a lifetime of memories with them while soaking up the new moments as you go can make the difference between a good experience and an unforgettable one. Through our years of experience, we’ve identified five factors to help you select the perfect place for you.

1. Wedding Venue or Hotel? 
It depends! When it comes to gorgeous photographs, the most critical factor to consider when selecting a getting ready venue is the amount of beautiful natural light that flows into the room. Most wedding venues offer a bridal dressing room as part of their wedding day package. Some of these rooms are spacious, well-lit by large windows, and completely enhance the story of the day, while others are dark, lit only by lamps or overhead lights and cramped. When you’re touring your venue, make sure to ask to see the dressing area so that you can decide if it’s a good fit for you. You’ll also want to talk to your venue to ensure you’ll be able to arrive on the property with plenty of time to get ready. Many venues don’t allow you to arrive until someone from their management team does, and if that doesn’t happen until early afternoon, you won’t have enough time to have a smooth, stress-free morning of hair and makeup, getting dressed and, of course, plenty of photos. So, if you love the dressing area at your wedding venue, it’s always best to request more time on the property, even if it costs a little more, to avoid the stress of cramming everything into a packed time frame. In a lot of cases, brides choose an alternate getting ready venue, since it can be less expensive to rent a hotel room for a few hours than to add hours at your wedding venue, and there are so many beautiful hotel rooms that will provide a gorgeous backdrop for your getting ready photos.  Most makeup artists and hair stylists will come directly to you, so a hotel room can really be a great way to go for a peaceful, stress-free start to your wedding day.

groom getting ready_0002

2. If you choose a hotel, upgrade to a suite. It’s worth it!
A lot of wedding venue bridal suites (and even one-bedroom hotel rooms) can often be too small for more than a few people at a time. Hotel suites offer large bathrooms with multiple vanities, so your bridesmaids can get ready at the same time (instead of waiting for a sink, dorm room style). Look for hotel suites that have spacious living rooms, which can help enhance everyone’s experience. The extra chairs and tables give makeup artists and hair stylists space to style multiple ladies at a time, your bridal party will have plenty of room to get dressed, and the extra closet and floor space keeps the room looking clean and clutter-free for photographs. Sometimes, the hotel will even open a fresh second room for you at no additional charge for you to get your dress on and take a few bridal portraits. It never hurts to ask! If you can find a suite with a kitchen/dining area, it will give you an opportunity eat a stress-free breakfast together, have cold beverages available the entire time, and make sure everyone is well-fueled for the day. For a few extra dollars, and a happy bridal party, it’s totally worth it!

groom getting ready_0004

3. Be on the lookout for floor to ceiling windows. The bigger the better!
Whether you’re at your wedding venue or in a hotel suite, floor to ceiling windows are the key ingredient to beautiful images. So, the bigger the windows, the better you and your girls will look in the photographs! Large windows create soft, natural, flattering light for makeup application, which will help ensure your makeup looks fresh and natural in the photos. Also, when hair and makeup are done, a large living space with floor to ceiling windows will provide enough room to lace up the dress and take bridal portraits with the most ideal light, the kind of swoon-worthy light wedding days are made of.

groom and bride getting ready_0007

4. Get ready on the same property as your groom. 
One of the greatest advantages of hiring a husband and wife team is having an experienced lead female photographer in the bride’s room and an experienced lead male photographer in the groom’s room.  Our shooting time begins when the first photographer arrives at the first scheduled venue, so when you and your groom get ready on the same property, it maximizes the number of photographs you get. If the bridesmaids are at a the wedding venue or a hotel and the groomsmen are at a private residence  30 minutes away, that’s 30 more minutes of driving and 30 less minutes of documenting memories. Also, bridesmaids almost always arrive earlier to the getting ready venue than groomsmen, and since our first moments at your getting ready venue are spent photographing details (like the dress), having two photographers on location will get you two different perspectives, expedites the process (one to hang it and one to photograph it) and gets us back to you faster.

groom getting ready_0001

5. Consider the interior and exterior aesthetics.
Getting ready venues with appealing visual aesthetics like unique doors, textured walls, bold furniture or sleek architecture is added bonus. A venue that matches the vision of your wedding day style will help tell a more cohesive story. If your wedding is full of antique details, look for a vintage venue to start your day. If your wedding day is elegant and classic, use those same words as you hunt for a place to get ready. The more it feels like “you” the better!

Boojum Tree Wedding_0017

Next week, we’ll talk about what to bring to the getting ready venue to get the most out of your photographer.

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

meet us

Amy & Jordan

We're high school sweethearts who had no formal training in photography, but went from being elementary school teachers to making six figures as full-time photographers. We're teachers at heart (with over 30,000 online course students) and are here to help YOU take amazing photos, build a thriving business and live a beautiful life. As parents to three littles, we're all about making every minute count and love to share what we're learning along the way. We're so glad you're here!
 

Hey friend! we're

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