Planning your wedding is so much more than booking vendors, finalizing a design direction, and writing your timeline. You are crafting an experience for your first moments of marriage. I approach and organize each wedding weekend not as logistical timeline with deliveries and send offs, but through the lens of my bride and groom. What will their morning feel like? How much time will they have with their families? Does this enable them to spend some alone time together?

One of the best aspects of my job is working with couples to take their favorite wedding traditions and merge them with their priorities for how their wedding day looks, feels, and flows. My favorite modern tradition is, bar none, the first look. I am all about creating an experience for your guests, your bridal party, and most importantly, you and your love. I believe a first look beautifully shapes your wedding day. Here are my favorite ways a first look guides how your first moments of marriage look, flow, and feel:

Focus
It is easy and wonderful to get swept in the details of the day, seeing all of your favorite people, the delicious food and fun surprises of the evening. But after a giddy morning with your closest friends getting into your bridal best, time alone with your soon-to-be-husband is incredibly re-settling. Before pictures begin, before guests arrive, before the timeline hits the ground running, that time together to hear him say how beautiful you are, to tell him how wonderful he is, and to fully realize the anticipation and joy of the upcoming ceremony is irreplaceable. It helps you feel strong and united heading into the day. It’s your chance to say together, “here we go, it’s you and me.” It shifts the tone of the day and jump-starts the celebration!

Freedom
Often what people don’t consider is that without a first look, you’re spending the majority of your wedding day away from your fiancé and away from your friends and family. A first look reclaims that time for you and your favorites and frees up all of the time after your ceremony for conversation with your guests, time with your new husband, and a fabulous dance party. Us of the TX Hill Country, had a bluegrass band play Carolina in my Mind for the processional because we went to school in SC, and served fajitas and margaritas because we can’t get enough Tex Mex. Personalization is one of my favorite parts of designing a wedding. Have fun with it! Show off your story!

Celebration
This might be my favorite benefit of a first look. Having spent the last year of your life planning and dreaming about your wedding day, you should actually spend your wedding celebrating! With your pictures largely completed beforehand, you can exit your ceremony and jump straight into hugging your bridal party, connecting with guests who traveled to witness your marriage, eating the meal you meticulously planned, and dancing with all of your favorites rather than relocating for all of your portraits, missing cocktail hour, and sacrificing time away from your guests. I find a first look enables couples to actually spend more time celebrating and to be more present on their wedding day!

If a first look isn’t for you, still find ways to slow down your day and protect your time as a freshly married couple! Some other ideas: translate the idea to a smaller scale first look with your dad, grandpa, brothers, or another important figure in your life or steal away for dinner alone with your groom. I’m a big proponent of shaping your day exactly as you dream it to be and there are absolutely ways to infuse your day with focus, freedom, and celebration whether or not a first look is for you.

Alex Meyer Events
www.alexmeyerevents.com
alexmeyerevents@gmail.com
512.799.3199

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If you, or anyone you know, is looking for a photographer, I’d love to chat with you! Fill out a contact form by clicking here, or send an email to kristen@kristenlynne.com!

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