Brent Foster Photography

I’ve asked Beth, a bride who hired us to document her wedding this past summer in London at Aeolian Hall to guest post on our blog today.

Beth and her now husband Glenn chose to do a “first look” on their wedding day. For those unfamiliar with the term, a “first look” is when the bride and groom see each other for the first time prior to the ceremony. I do realize this breaks what some consider a tradition on the wedding day, however, if you do your research, you’ll learn that the traditional of not seeing each other until the ceremony comes from the days of arranged marriages. It is said that the bride and groom didn’t see each other until the ceremony in the case that they didn’t find each other attractive, and ran!

Not only that, but choosing to do a first look will allow you to have ample time to do amazing bride and groom creative images and wedding party photos with your photographer. Quite simply, it allows the day to go smooth, and you have more time to enjoy it, and truly soak in your day!

Here’s what Beth has to say:

“After locking down our venue, our date, and Brent & Tammy as our photographers, the next thing we tried to sort out was the timing. How would we organize ourselves, our wedding party, our guests, our caterer, and be able to get everything done in one day?

A possible idea we found was to do what’s called a “first look” with our photographers. We didn’t know much about it, but soon learned that it was becoming an acceptable alternative to the traditional schedule. A first look would allow us to do all of our wedding party pictures before our ceremony, thus eliminating the hours of boredom and dead space for our guests between our vows and our reception.

We spoke with Brent about it, and he was completely on board, and highly recommends it to all his clients. He also mentioned a couple of things we hadn’t thought of. The first being that we didn’t have to do wedding photos near the ceremony, we would be able to do them wherever we wanted to and could take advantage of better light in a better location. The second thing being that we could enjoy cocktail hour with our guests, after having a private part of the day just for us. Thankfully we weren’t a hard sell, so we agreed to do a First Look. It was a bit harder to convince our parents, but we are very glad that we defended this choice whenever we had to.

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On the Big Day, we met with each other and our wedding party at a local park. Brent arranged it so that Glenn waited amongst the branches of a willow tree, while our wedding party was off in the distance. I came around behind my husband, and he slowly turned to see me for the first time. The joyful and surprised reaction was amazing, and a moment he and I will share forever. It was important for me to have some moments just for us on our big day, and this was definitely one of those. It also let us express our emotions however we wanted, something you can’t really do while coming down the aisle.

The rest of the photos speak for themselves, as I’m sure you can see. We were so relaxed that we could really sink into each photo together on the biggest day of our lives. We didn’t have to worry about the finer points of our guests, caterers, the band, the cakes, etc as it all felt miles away.

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While I can appreciate a bride’s wish to have her husband and all guests see her coming down the aisle in a grande reveal, I can assure you that doing a first look doesn’t lessen that moment at all. Maybe my husband would have teared up a bit more, but since he tends to be a vocal guy, he leaves the tears to me… and I assure you, I still teared up the moment I turned the corner and saw his smiling face awaiting my arrival at our alter.”

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A huge thanks to Beth for writing this guest post for us. No one can say it better than a bride who has been there and done that!

Definitely check out Beth and Glenn’s wedding if if you haven’t already done so. It’s filled with amazingly detailed do it yourself decor.

Below you will see a short video Beth’s sister shot as we were doing the first look. Her sister took this on her point and shoot digital camera from where they were standing in the distance. Beth says she imagines she wouldn’t have gotten the same reaction if her husband had seen her at the end of an aisle

First Look from Beth W. on Vimeo.