Styled Shoot | Ditching the Fuckery

Let’s say a hard truth for a moment. The wedding industry is very one sided. It’s discriminative and unjust without necessarily meaning to. That doesn’t mean it deserves a pass by any means. It needs work and change is only possible one step at a time and by people willing to put in the work.

It’s no secret that the majority of representation for couples and partnerships within the industry consists of straight, white, thin, abled bodied people. I don’t believe in this extremely limited and misrepresentation of an idea of beauty. Every body type, skin color, ability, sexual orientation, religion or lack thereof and gender identity deserves to be celebrated.

That being said, I don’t use gendered terms such as bride and groom or bridal session. A person deserves great portraits of themselves no matter how they identify. This is the reason I offer pre wedding portrait sessions rather than just bridal portraits. You do not and should not have to identify as a bride in order to recieve a dedicated portrait session before your wedding day.

When planning this portrait session with Milly, I had this goal in mind. I wanted the portraits to reflect the person I was photographing. I wanted them to feel playful and reflect their personality. I wanted to meet them where they were and where they felt comfortable. No performance, just two people meeting to document the person in front of me as they are in this joyful moment in their lives.

When they said they were more than willing to model for me I was really excited because It was really important to me to showcase that you didn’t have to wear a wedding dress to be photographed in a beautiful way. You can be male or female or trans and still be deserving of quality portraits. So often people not identifying as women get left out of adequate wedding day coverage.