You remember the first day of school, when you put on your most favorite "New School" outfit, checked yourself out in the mirror, made sure you had your lunch pail packed, all your cool, new colored pencils, wondered if Mr. Right would be in Mrs. H's class or if you'd have to wait to see him in the hall at lunch time or maybe catch a glimpse of him at recess, playing handball with your older brother. Remember those butterflies. The ones that began to flutter in your empty belly at 8am as you walked into class, only to be greeted by your new teacher and close friends from last year. Which, by all accounts was awesome and great, but it meant that the butterflies would continue to flap their incessant, fluttering wings until recess. Yes, the feeling of waiting until the ceremony to see your husband/wife-to-be is kind of like that, only on a possibly less juvenile scale, but equally as nerve wrecking. And, while we still know many brides and grooms who are more apt to honor the tradition of waiting to see the bride or groom until the ceremony, there are those who prefer to take a peek at their love before the big walk down the aisle. We aren't judging either way. We think your day is YOUR day and you should do what you want, the way you want. No one should make that decision for you on one of the most important moments of your life, but if you want advice or just want to reminisce about your 3rd grade crush, then you've come to the right place.
So if you are all about tradition, and love the idea of working up to the big moment, if you and your groom have any conflict whatsoever, or are unsure about seeing eachother before the ceremony, if you've hidden every detail about your appearance from eachother for the last year of wedding planning, we say don't push the envelope because you don't want that to be the one thing you wish you'd have done differently. On the other hand, if you are envelope pushers, if you like doing things a little differently, if you want to release some of those crazy butterflies from your corseted belly, and you want an intimate photo op with just you and your partner where you can surprise eachother with how unbelievably fantastic you look and get lots of beautiful images whilst checking eachother out, then a First Look is definitely for you. Some thoughts when making the final decision: We kind of think you should BOTH agree on this, First Looks will generally include only you and your future hubby/wife and photographer(s), There should still be an element of surprise i.e. one of you is turned around as the other approaches, there are alternatives to first looks like Day After Shoots, which will be in a later post. And finally, it's always up to you. These are just the ramblings of two photographers that love capturing weddings with or without First Looks. Here is one that we love though:




