What is pre wedding photography, you may be asking yourself?  Pre wedding photography is exactly what it sounds like.  It is a photography session taken before the wedding.  Why would you do this?  Read on to find out!

Lisa and Derek were getting married in Two Harbors, Minnesota in the fall.  For those of us that live in Minnesota, we know that the North Shore is CRAZY busy in the fall.  You literally have people coming to the North Shore simply to look at the fall colors.  They have the Fall Color Finder here.  It’s no joke.  Those colors are absolutely beautiful.  This makes for some madness when weddings happen.  It is busy.

When we spoke to Lisa and Derek a few weeks prior to their wedding to set up their timeline, they wanted photos at Gooseberry Falls.  If you don’t know Gooseberry Falls, it’s a state park with amazing falls that anyone would be happy to get photos at.

The issue is that on a wedding day, you have to do the following:

• • Travel to the falls from your venue
  • PARK (which can be a long wait in the fall)
  • Walk down to the actual falls
  • Take the photos – our couples are usually looking for the long exposure photos with the falls, so it takes time to set those up
  • Walk back up to the parking lot
  • Travel back to the venue

In Lisa and Derek’s case, travel to and from the venue and walking up and down to the falls would have eaten up an hour.  We went back and forth a bit on what we could do and finally came to a conclusion that worked out really well.  We were staying at the resort with them the night prior, so we asked them if they wanted to do a nice couple’s pre wedding session before they went off to their rehearsal dinner.  It worked out really well.  We weren’t on a timeline for a wedding day, the park was far less busy because it was at about 3pm on a Friday versus noon on a Saturday, and they got to utilize their beautiful venue property for photos the following day.