We got married at Kendall Point and it is such an elegant venue that I decided it would be the perfect place to take my bridal portraits! We absolutely loved our venue. We fell in love with it first when my brother and sister-in-law got married there in 2015. We tried and tried to find somewhere else to make our own venue, but honestly nothing compared! Also fun fact about us, that was the day that Matt told me he loved me for the first time. So it held a special meaning in our relationship.

1 – Taking bridal portraits at your venue are a great way to get more time imagining your big day and testing out some of your vendors ahead of time. I definitely recommend doing a test run with your hair and make up vendor to make sure everything turns out the way you want it to. One of my friends did my hair and makeup for the wedding day and wasn’t able to do it for my bridal portraits (we got together another day to do a trial run before the wedding, I will share more about her in my wedding day post coming soon!) so I had Knot & Veil do my hair and makeup for my bridals and they did an amazing job! If you are getting married in the hill country area in Texas, I would recommend them.

2 – This is also a great time to make sure your dress is in and fits (make sure to give yourself enough time for alterations). We got engaged in January and I said yes to my dress in May. I had so much fun trying on every style out there and soaked up every moment finding the most expensive dress I will ever own! Ha. Another good tip that my photographer, Dawn Elizabeth Studios, gave me was to use this as an opportunity to test out my accessories and veil as well. I’m so glad she told me that because I hadn’t even thought about what jewelry or shoes I would wear yet and it was great to have those picked out ahead of time. My florist, Angie from Evember, even gave me a smaller version of my bouquet to use for my portraits and asked me to give her any feedback on changes I wanted for the actual wedding bouquet. I thought that was so nice!

3 – It allowed more time with my photographer for us to get to know each other’s style! I think she was able to see my personality and what kind of shots and angles we would like for the wedding day. She is already amazingly talented so this was easy for her, but it was a good chance for us to get to know each other more! It also saved us quite a bit of time on our wedding day. Since we had already knocked out all the photos of just me, we could utilize much more time on photos with family, the wedding party, and of just me and Matt. Time goes by faster than you think so I found that this was really important!

4 – It gives you two opportunities to have good weather for photos. If you are getting married at an outdoor venue, you can never anticipate what the weather will be like on the day of so it’s nice to have another opportunity for the odds to be in your favor! I took my bridal portraits in January and we got married in February so there wasn’t too much variation in the weather of those two months. Luckily, we had pleasant weather both days – so thankful for that!

5 – Bridal portraits are a great keepsake to have for the rest of your life. This is the very first time you get to see yourself as a full on bride – hair and make up done, dress on, bouquet in hand, and the vision of marrying your best friend! This is when things started to get real for me. I also really valued having my Mom there. She was so helpful with my dress and holding my veil for certain shots and Dawn gave me back several photos with my Mom in them. I will hang on to those forever! It was a very special day.

I hope this was helpful in preparing for your bridal photos and that you feel absolutely gorgeous when you’re dressed up in full out bride mode! 😉

Lots of love,

Maddie

Being engaged was such a fun and exciting time! My heart goes out to all the beautiful brides out there that are going through their wedding season during covid. Trust me, I feel your pain experiencing my first pregnancy during this time. It’s totally not what I imagined. On the bright side though, if you are recently engaged, you can use this time to do all the planning and fun things before your big day! I’m sending lots of prayers that covid passes asap and if you’ve had to postpone, you will be able to celebrate very soon like you should!

One of my favorite parts of the wedding planning phase was asking my closest friends to be bridesmaids. If you are looking for ideas of how to ask your best girls to stand by your side on your wedding day, here is what I ordered and put together for my bridesmaid proposal boxes!

I ordered these cute boxes from Etsy, linked here. They have 11 different styles so it makes it easy to mix up the styles for each girl if you want a variety!

I also found these personalized champagne glasses from Etsy! I thought these were the perfect size and would be so fun for the girls to use at the bachelorette party and wedding for all the “cheersing”! I’ll link them here.

I ordered these personalized candles from Etsy as well. They come in an 8 oz mason jar so they fit perfectly in the boxes and they actually smelled really good too! You can find them here.

I threw in the delicious little candy cubes from Sugarfina to go in their glasses for the champagne! They also have multiple flavors so you can choose a variety and mix it up for everyone. Linking them from the Sugarfina website here. The lotion is from Charming Charlie. I can’t find a link for it from their website but it was something fun to add in extra for the girls. Lastly, of course I included a picture of us together!

For the girls that lived close by, I invited them to dinner at a fun champagne bar in Houston and I either mailed the boxes or met with the girls individually to give out the rest of them! I loved putting these together and hope it gives you some ideas of what to include. No matter what, your girls are going to be so happy for you and excited to be apart of your big day!

Cheers to you!

Maddie