Chicago West Loop Wedding

Planning Your Wedding

Salvage One Wedding Photos

With Photography in Mind

We're often asked by couples if there's anything they should know about planning their wedding to ensure the best possible photos of their wedding day. So this page is here to help our couples understand how we think and what will maximize the chances of us taking great photos on the wedding day.

The reality is every wedding is different, and we want to capture the uniqueness of your wedding rather than creating cliche photos that have been done before.

These 4 things are key to creating unique photos that transcend typical wedding photography: 1) trust, 2) time, 3) location, and 4) openness.

West Loop Chicago Wedding Photo

TRUST

Chicago Suburb Wedding Photographer

The single most important factor in making sure that the photos of your wedding are everything you dream they can be is trust. When our couples trust us to lead them through the process of taking epic photos, it allows us to create magic.

Sometimes that means asking you to run back and forth on top of a hill. It might mean asking you to do something silly. It might mean running outside at the end of the night to create a breathtaking night photo. But, if you trust us, we'll definitely make you look great and take some awesome photos.

What it actually takes to create epic photos, however, is often counterintuitive to what you may have seen or heard. So read on and we'll make magic together.

Chicago Theater Wedding Photo
Chicago Wedding Photographer

TIME

Second only to trust, time is key to taking great photos. That's one of the main reasons we suggest our all day wedding packages, because when it comes to moments, we don't know when they're going to happen, and if we aren't there, we can't capture them.

It's also why we suggest doing portraits at or near either your ceremony or reception location rather than traveling to multiple locations. While many couples are told that they need to hop on a party bus and travel to three locations to get great portraits, we've found that traveling from location to location takes a lot more time than expected, often leaving less than 15 minutes per location to take photos of our couples and their wedding party. Ideally, we ask for at least 45 minutes with just the couple in one location to take the kind of portraits we show in our portfolio. So, consider letting us take all your portraits at your receptions venue or at one awesome location.

San Miguel de Allende Wedding Photographer
Indian Wedding Photographers Chicago
San Miguel de Allende Wedding Photo

There's a lot of wisdom in having a plan for your wedding day: when to get your makeup done, when to put on your dress, when to take family photos etc. But taking great portraits requires more than good planning. It takes freedom to experiment, willingness to try something new, and an openness to the process. So we ask that our couples come into their day without preconceptions of what your photos will look like.

Try to avoid spending hours on Pinterest looking at other people's wedding photos. Because your photos won't look like those. Even if we tried, we couldn't recreate those photos. Because they are someone else's vision at someone else's wedding. What we create will hopefully be true to your wedding and so much better than those other people's photos. So be open. Allow yourself to be surprised. Then we can create something truly special that reflects the reality of your day.