Styled Shoots vs. Real Weddings
Real wedding or styled shoot? (Hint: I’ve never done a styled shoot.) Photo by Gold Grid Studios.
Okay, now that I’ve made it past the busy season, I want to share with you some more thoughts on wedding planning. Right now is prime planning season, so I hope these thoughts are timely for you. Let me know what you think!
In this age of digital marketing and social media, we all know that posting the best photos is a great PR move. No one takes advantage of this the way wedding vendors do. We’re always posting photos of beautiful work we have done to catch the eye of potential clients. I should know: I do it, too! And there’s nothing wrong with it. But I want to draw your attention to one kind of photos, just so that you know exactly what you are seeing when the next gorgeous wedding photo catches your eye.
Wedding vendors love to do what we call “styled shoots.” In case you never heard of them, here is what it is: A group of wedding vendors will get together and design a wedding. A venue will provide the space; a florist and decorator will add flowers, draping, lights, and other decorative touches; a bakery will provide a cake; a rental company will lend linens, dishes, chairs, etc.; models will be hired to wear a designer’s dresses; and so on. Everyone donates their services so a photographer can take intensely beautiful photos that everyone can use on Instagram–and maybe get a wedding blog or magazine to pick up the photos and feature everyone who is involved. Sounds like a great marketing technique! And it is.
But you, as the consumer, don’t necessarily know that these photos are not of a wedding that was paid for by a real person. And the difference that makes is that each of these vendors can bring out their most expensive products or services to display their skills at their very best. It makes sense from a marketing point of view: If I were doing one of these shoots, I would also want to display my talent at its peak.
The problem is that these styled shoots play right into the already over-hyped marketing of wedding products and services that makes some people believe that their wedding must look a certain way–and that way turns out to be rather pricey. It’s hard to tell by looking at these photos that real weddings, the ones on a real budget, may not look just like the styled shoots.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking the wedding vendors who do styled shoots. They need to market themselves the best way they know how, and this is a great tool. But if you are browsing Instagram or Pinterest for wedding inspiration, keep this information tucked in the back of your mind: What you may be seeing is not necessarily someone’s real wedding. It may be some gorgeous-looking marketing. Look for hashtags like #realwedding to see what other people are actually doing. And then enjoy the styled shoot photos, too, because they are often very beautiful!
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