Champaign and Urbana wedding photographer | Holly Birch Photography

Occasionally my clients opt to do a “first look” prior to the wedding, which basically means that the bride and groom take a few minutes to privately see each other for the first time. Since traditionally the bride and groom wait for this moment to happen when the bride first walks down the aisle, I rarely get the opportunity to photograph this moment in good light and with more picturesque surroundings. Cara and Josh were married on May 8, and they decided to do the First Look. The benefit to this is that we get to do most of the wedding party photographs prior to the wedding, which means we need less time between the ceremony and reception for pictures. Another reason I like when couples choose to go this route is that it makes that initial “seeing each other moment” more private and gives the couple a chance to share a few words and maybe even a gift. I will never pressure my clients to do a First Look, but if you think this is something you might like to do, give me a call or email and I’ll walk you through how we can orchestrate it at your wedding. It’s worth a thought!

Here are a few images from Cara and Josh’s first look:

We had Josh turn his back to where Cara would be coming from. Then we had her maid of honor fix her train at the top of the steps and we had Josh turn around and then they walked toward each other. This was Cara before descending the steps:

After taking a few moments to look each other up and down, they share a couple moments of raw emotion with a kiss:

This is why I love what I do!

If you’d like to see some more First Look samples, just let me know!!

And here are a few other ones that I like but didn’t blog in the other post:
My assistant for the day, James, took a few of me in action (which I sometimes forget to ask for, so I’m glad he got a few!!).

Here’s me with Jay Cluver, one of my favorite local videographers!

Sometimes I’ll catch the eye of the bride or groom during the ceremony. Cara happened to look over at me as I was standing at the end of the line of bridesmaids. Sneaky!

Here’s another one that James took that I just love. Beautiful! I love the detail it shows in the bodice of her dress:

And another one I took of the bouquet and the family handkerchief that was tied to it.