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The Whole Story – The First Look & Bridals/Groomals

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I love first look wedding photo shoots! My favorite is when the bride sneaks up on the groom, taps him on the shoulder and the photographer captures the groom's reaction to seeing his bride as he turns around. Joe got his "first look" at me in my dress when we took our bridal/groomal pictures about a month before our wedding. And while I would like to tell you that our first look was cute and happy, like this...

In high school, I admired Joe from a far, and after graduation we went our separate ways, but life led us right back to where we started so that we could fall in love.

I love first look wedding photo shoots! My favorite is when the bride sneaks up on the groom, taps him on the shoulder and the photographer captures the groom’s reaction to seeing his bride as he turns around. Joe got his “first look” at me in my dress when we took our bridal/groomal pictures about a month before our wedding. And while I would like to tell you that our first look was cute and happy, like this…

or this…

…it wasn’t. My mom was gone somewhere the night we took our pictures, and I think my sister was going somewhere as well, so I didn’t have anyone to come with me to help me into my dress and had to put it on before I left the house. My sister and I were fighting with my dress (seriously, a dress should not take half an hour to an hour just to lace up… but mine did that night) so I was running late and we were stressing because we didn’t want to get a lot of great pictures and have time for sunset pictures before it got dark.

Instead of being an exciting mini event, Joe’s first time seeing me in my dress happened as I ran frantically down the stairs all ready to go (I think minus my jewelry and some makeup) and he and our photographer jumped up so we could rush out the door and get the picture party started. We did get some really great pictures that night and had a lot of fun, so I didn’t let the imperfect start to the night bother me for too long.

Funny story: We took the first half of our bridals (including the pictures above) at Memory Grove Park in Salt Lake. None of us had been there before, so we didn’t know how to get to the parking lot. Not wanting to waste any time, we parked on a street at the top of the park and hiked down a winding hill to the park below. It wasn’t the most fun to do in my wedding dress and shoes, but it was quite the adventure!

^^ The one picture I really cared about getting that day.

You can see the rest of our bridal pictures here.

Did you take first look pictures on your wedding day?