Your Ultimate Posing Guide for Natural and Confident Wedding & Engagement Photos

INTRODUCTION

All right ladies and gents, obviously, you want to look natural and feel confident on your wedding day. But, aside from professional models, I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys being in front of a camera all day long and having the biggest moments of your life documented.

As if getting married and planning a wedding day isn’t stressful enough, now we’re going to be following you around every step of the day, capturing it all.

So, how can you look and feel natural and confident in those wedding photos? Well, we are big believers in knowledge equals power.

The more you know about posing in front of the camera, along with feeling comfortable with the person behind the camera, is going to go a long way in making you feel comfortable and confident, ensuring the absolute best wedding photography for you.

In this final part, we’re going to educate you on what to do with 3 parts of your body. This will help you to know what to do with your eyes, your hands, and your face, so that you look and feel like the beautiful couple that you are on your wedding day.

We will address wedding poses for the bride first, and some pointers for the groom too. We’re going to make this a quick read, so take a few minutes and soak it all in!

Let’s get started!

POSING YOUR EYES

There’s a time and place for looking directly at the camera, but some of the best photos are when the camera is being ignored completely. Here’s some points to keep in mind:

- If you’re facing your groom, and I ask you to go forehead or nose to nose, you want either your eyes or your grooms eyes closed. If both eyes are open you run the risk of it looking like you’re having a stare down in your own wedding photo!

- If your chin is tilted down, you’ll want your eyes cast down, or closed as well.

- Let’s say for example, your groom is standing behind you, and he’s wrapped you up in a snuggle across your shoulders, you can do a couple different things with your eyes, you can:

1. Tilt your chin up rotate to face him, and look at him

2. Face your photographer, look in the camera and smile or “smize”

3. Or you can look down and out, so you can look to the left or right, tilt your chin down slightly and keep your eyes gazing down as well.

- If you’re kissing, keep your eyes closed.

POSING YOUR HANDS

No free hands! Always be touching! And if the pose/prompt allows for it, touch skin.

Here’s some points to keep in mind:

• If it doesn’t feel comfortable, there’s a pretty good chance it won’t look good in the final photograph, so I often ask if it feels natural before taking the photo.

• Unless you’re pregnant, please refrain from placing hands on/around the stomach. Being completely wrapped up in a big bear hug is okay, but otherwise keep hands on waist, chest, neck, face or around shoulders.

• Relaxed fingers and a light touch when cupping your partner's face, chin or neck looks a lot better than tense fingers or a very firm grip. And NO spider hands! Our hands are as big as our faces, but we look better if we make them look smaller and don't call attention to them. (unless you want to look like a monkey).

• Whenever possible, show off that ring!!

• Hands in hair (gently) produces super romantic, and sometimes intense (in a good way) pictures!

• Bonus Tip! If your fiancé is wearing a jacket, lightly pulling on his jacket is an awesome idea for your photos! You can make it fun and playful or romantic and sexy.

POSING YOUR FACE

How you pose your face can make a big difference on how you look in your photos!It will definitely feel awkward at first, but take 3 minutes a day to practice in front of a mirror and you’ll feel WAY more comfortable and confident by the time you’re in front of the camera.

Here’s some points to keep in mind:

• Keep your chin neutral, slightly up or slightly down. Too far up, or too far down can make you look creepy.

• Leaning slightly toward the camera (from the waist) will give you a better neckline (turtle neck) pulling your head away from the camera will give you a double-chin and make your body look bigger.

• Angling your face slightly to the right or slightly to the left tends to be more flattering than a straight on photo.

• These combinations of angling your chin up or down and your face to one side or the other means you have an endless number of variations for when you pose!

• Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and open your teeth slightly to accentuate your jawline. Not just the tip of your tongue, but the back of your tongue too. It feels weird, but practice this and trust me, it makes a difference!

CONCLUSION

Thank you SO much for taking the time to read this 3-part engagement session guide! I hope you loved reading it as much as I loved making it for you!!

We are your local engagement and wedding photography experts in Northern Florida and Southern Georgia. (and beyond)

If you’re a newly engaged couple (and now that we’ve armed you with how to select the perfect time and place for your engagement photos), then we’d love to chat with you!

We can help you establish a perfect wedding timeline and make sure your family shot list is complete, and take all of the chaos and stress out of your wedding-day photography.

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