Without further ado, allow us to introduce Miss Emerson!

What is it, Kirby?! Are the pressures of turning one starting to weigh on your little shoulders?

Is it the stress of learning to stand all by yourself? No, that can’t be it…you’re so happy to have your mom and dad give you a helping hand!

After seeing you pose like a champ at our studio in Memphis, TN, the pressures of being too adorable are something you’ve clearly overcome…

Perhaps the pressure of being your dad’s future hunting partner is keeping you up at night?!

What’s that? Oh! It turns out Kirby is just a “peek-a-boo” enthusiast. Phew!

Oh, yes. This wedding dress experience is every bride-to-be’s hope and expectation. And don’t get me wrong, some brides are lucky enough to to get this experience. However, we think it’s important to know a few basic “To Do’s” to make every brides’s shopping as wonderful as it can possibly be!

You would think a wedding photographer would have known these basic to do’s before commencing her own wedding dress shopping. But our photographer, Kim, was not one of the lucky brides to have the magical experience of finding her dress on the first go around. First of all, Kim did not make an appointment, and decided spur of the moment to stop off at a local bridal store just to try on a couple dresses. This also meant that she had no support with her. She carefully selected a few dresses in her size in the style she had imagined wearing on her big day. As she tried them on, it became immediately apparent that the dresses were WAY too small! Not having known that wedding dress sizes are not your actual size, you can imagine how shocking and upsetting this may have been! Upset and making a quick retreat to her car, Kim called a friend who gently informed her that this was totally normal, and then being a true friend, reprimanded her for even considering going dress shopping by herself.

Fortunately, Kim’s next experience was drastically different than the first, and armed with an encouraging friend, she was able to find the AMAZING dress she’ll be wearing on March 31st! It just goes to show that reality TV is truly not everyone’s reality.

What did we learn from Kim’s experience? Well, here is the Ramblin’ Rose “TO DO” list for the ideal dress shopping experience:

DO: Make an appointment. This ensures you ARE going to be the priority for your sales person and have that special attention of someone trying to find you the exact dress that’s perfect for you.

DO: Bring a handful of close friends or family members who know your taste and personality the best, and who’s judgement you trust implicitly.

DON’T: Bring all of your friends, your cousins, your aunts, etc. Too many opinions will be confusing and you may end up trying to please everyone else instead of yourself.

DO: Know that wedding dress sizes run VERY small at bridal boutiques! (This may not necessarily apply to J.Crew or BHLDN dresses)

DO: Try on something you hadn’t considered. Sometimes a different style may end up being more flattering and the right fit for you!

DON’T: Go in with the expectation you will find your dress on the first attempt. Not everyone is quite so lucky!

And, my number one DON’T: Once you’ve found a dress you adore and you know it’s perfect. DO NOT keep purposefully looking for wedding dresses. As time passes while your dress is on order, it is easy to be filled with doubt if you see something you think is better. If you take your time picking your dress, and you know it’s the right one when you try it on, trust that feeling. You will only sabotage yourself and over-think it if you continue to look and become disappointed when you find something you may have liked better.

And in case you aren’t interested in going through the process of going to a boutique and trying on a hundred dresses, there are a couple wonderful dress sources that have popped up over the past few years.

J.Crew Wedding Boutique

We absolutely love these dresses! There’s a great range in prices so anyone can find something they can afford. The dresses are simple and lovely, but each one has a small twist to make it special. J.Crew already has such an amazing reputation, so there’s no need to be worried or nervous about the quality of these dresses. The dresses are easily returnable (standard return policy even applies to the wedding dresses!), and the dresses ship as quickly as their normal clothing (so great if you put off finding a dress for too long…just make sure you factor in time for possible alterations!). J.Crew has really expanded their selection of dresses and now have lots of veils and beautiful accessories! Here are a few of our favorite dresses:

Whitney Gown: $425 (but on sale for 298!!)                                                                 Dune Gown: $995

Waterfall Gown: $2,400                                                                                 Dominique Gown: $2,850

BHLDN (Anthropologie’s Bridal Boutique)

Anthropologie really delivers their unique sense of style in their wedding boutique. You may spend a little more, but these dresses are tailored for the untraditional bride seeking something a little different and unique. These dresses are also easily returned! The dresses are breathtaking for the more daring bride, but what we really love are the amazing accessories from this company! Check it out!

Divine Downpour Gown: $2,500                                                               Elysium Gown: $2,400

Ethereal Monarch Gown: $3,200                                                     Pleated Fantasy Gown: $3,600

Unscripted Headband: $575                                                         Polka Dot d’Orsays: $370

Custom Made Dresses

With the surging popularity of sites like Etsy.com, it’s becoming easier than ever to get custom dresses made. This next particular designer was almost Kim’s wedding dress downfall. After already finding her dress, Kim stumbled across Amanda Rose Studios while browsing Facebook. After seeing her designs that are made from vintage lingerie and laces, Kim began to second guess the gown she had already purchased. Amanda’s beautiful designs are perfect for the vintage, whimsical bride, and she also makes custom bridesmaid dresses!

The dress that had Kim second-guessing!

Here are a few of her other designs:

And no, we’re not talking about buying a house, we’re talking about picking the site for your engagement portraits!!

On your wedding day, your photos will be more formal, with everyone dressed up, so why not have fun with your engagement portraits? Your engagement portraits are a wonderful way to express your personalities and convey who you two are as a couple. One of the best ways to show that rests heavily on where you choose to have your portraits taken!

Liza and Stephen are one of our couples for 2012, and since they love downtown Memphis, and especially since they live there, there was no question as to where their photos would be taken! The couple looked so natural hitting all their favorite spots downtown, and that really shines through in their photos! We are so excited to shoot their wedding in April!

On the other hand, one of our past couples, Alayne and Paul, chose to have their photos taken at Shelby Farms. This down to earth couple loved being outside and enjoying nature, especially with their two dogs, which made picturesque Shelby Farms the perfect location for them!

In addition to questions about where to have engagement shots taken, we also get a lot of couples asking about what they should wear! Kim always describes the ideal apparel as “upscale casual.” We see this as the perfect combination of dressing nicely, yet not formally, and seizing the opportunity to throw in a bit of flair! We love sundresses, blazers, cute tops, nice jeans, fun jewelry and fun shoes! What would you wear out to drinks and dinner with the girls? Perfect. Wear that!

It’s best to pick colors that will coordinate with your partner without being too “matchy”, as well as stay away from anything with too much pattern as it may not always photograph well. But much like choosing a location, you should pick something that’s comfortable and you feel pretty in! (That goes for you, too, boys!) When you think you look good, you feel good and that will definitely translate in your pictures!

Our goal for this year was to create neutral color schemes, as well as focus more on having a couple walls with great texture as opposed to specific designs like we’ve done in the past. These walls give us so much more flexibility to really tailor our sets to our clients, instead of having them worried about what to wear to match OUR backdrops! The simplicity of the walls also means that more props will go with the different walls, so now we can get extra creative!

Stay tuned to see how great these look when put to use in an actual session!

We had never done an orange wall and really loved the idea of doing a burnt orange!

This is probably one of our favorites! We did a back layer in a grey-black and then used a neat sea sponge roller with a smokey grey to create a venetian plaster effect.
For this wall, we painted the base an awesome peacock blue, but to make the wall a bit more versatile we used a weathered crackle glaze, then painted an ivory topcoat, sat back and watched the paint make these awesome cracks as it dried!

Of course we kept our awesome rustic doors! We love how they really make this new turquoise wall POP!

Say you want your hair up, and with braids. Well, different people may use that to describe any of these, but is that what you had in mind?

We can’t tell you how many times we’ve walked in to take the “getting ready” shots of our brides to find a bridesmaid hard at work, re-doing the bride’s hairstyle. The importance of meeting with your hairstylist before your wedding day cannot be understated. Sometimes, what you envision as a soft, curly, romantic up-do, might not translate into the tousled elegant style you imagined. By meeting with your hairstylist a few weeks out from your day, you save yourself so much stress by knowing exactly what to expect, and that your vision will truly match your wedding day reality.

In addition, meeting with your stylist ahead of time gives you a great chance to plan a hair style customized to compliment any accessories you’ll be wearing in your hair. Wedding accessories have become so far evolved from simple veils now, and the possibilities have become truly endless with bird cage veils, fascinators, head bands, beaded combs; I could go on and on! If we could suggest one more thing, it would be to try your hardest to have those accessories with you by the time you go in for your hair trial. Grab a few pictures, make an appointment, and get to the salon for that trial! Trust me, both you AND your hairstylist will be much more comfortable knowing what to expect on your wedding day!

We were thrilled to hear from one of our past brides, Angela, when she contacted us about coming to our studio in Memphis, TN to have 4-month old Mason photographed! It never gets old to see our former wedding couples, especially when they bring cute babies along with them, and so we were happy to have them come in for family portraits. Mason did not disappoint and was one of the sweetest little boys, constantly smiling for every shot!

As you can see from the images below, this one is going to be a heartbreaker!

Obviously with such big plans for DIY decor, Kim put out an S.O.S. to her friends for help! This week everyone pitched in for a night of crafting that involved creating the amazing magazine wreaths that will hang in the venue, rosettes for the wreaths and table centerpieces, and a 8′x10′ curtain wall.

The Pinterest inspiration:

The girls hard at work on the magazine wreaths and the fabric strip wall:

“Team Rosettes” hard at work, cranking out those paper rosettes:

Now for the piece(s) de résistance! The final product of how Kim made magazine wreaths her own:

What do you think? Vintage rustic with a pop of color? Nailed it!