My selfie wedding
Professional photographers still have a role in the digital age
I paid $ 6,000 for my wedding photos and got a USB key with almost 1,000 digital images. Another $ 2,000 was paid to our videographer for a 15- minute highlight reel, which I uploaded to YouTube. Another grand went to a photo- booth company so guests could keep photos for themselves and glue the rest into our guest book.
Welcome to the well- documented world of millennial weddings, where we pay thousands of dollars for a photographer and get thousands of digital photos back. It’s also where every guest brings a tablet, iPhone or selfie stick and their Instagram shots populate carefully selected wedding hashtags.
To our parents’ generation, it can seem like our weddings are just an extension of the millennial need for constant self- expression and social- media presence, planned around the creation of shareable photo moments rather than the ceremony itself. But while millennials take their vows and marriages seriously, they also want to create a fun, memorable wedding.
Joe Rino and Diana Sposito, an engaged Calgary couple in their mid- 20s, say they don’t mind guests snapping photos while they say “I do.”
“At some ceremonies, the couple asks that people not take photos,” says Rino. “But for me, as a guest, I can capture some really good shots. Sometimes you can get photos that the photographer can’t, because you’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right angle. We’re still present in the moment, but with an iPhone in our hands. That’s what our world is like now and we won’t force people to stop taking photos at our ceremony.”
Photographer Laura Parry, 29, doesn’t mind when guests click away throughout a wedding. “I’ve never felt that allowing photos during your ceremony overshadows the importance or sanctity of it. You can have both.”
Parry says it’s an advantage for modern couples to have both types of wedding photos. The lasting, polished professional photos and
the candid, in- the- moment Instagram shots guests will upload.
“At the end of the day when I talk to the bride and groom, they say they are happy, but that the day was a blur. It’s great that they can check their wedding hashtag on Instagram and immediately experience their wedding the way their guests did.”
The only downside can be that millennial couples often end up with thousands of digital photos from their big day, which Roy White says is overwhelming.
White has been a photographer for almost 40 years. Gone are the days of wedding photos the way our parents experienced it — having one professional photographer shoot photos on film, spend weeks editing negatives by
hand, printing the best ones and providing a hard- copy album to the couple.
“Instead of photographers taking 2,000 to 3,000 photos at a wedding nowadays, why don’t they just take a couple hundred good ones in the first place?” says White. “In my opinion, photographers don’t have the same skills they used to. But if you shoot enough bullets, you’ll eventually hit the target.”
We know that knowledge selfexpression is key for millennials, but that can translate to more demands on wedding vendors. Parry says the amount of work that goes into shooting millennial weddings is tremendous. Often, when she has consultations with couples, they know exactly what they want and even have photos
ready from weddings on Pinterest or Etsy they want to recreate.
“The biggest thing with millennial weddings is that no detail is overlooked. These are extremely personalized, detail- focused weddings and they need their professional photos to reflect that,” says Parry.
One thing remains the same for our generation and our parents’ generation — the importance of wedding photos. Everyone agrees that capturing those once- in- alifetime moments is something to invest in. But for our parents, film was expensive and best used by a professional. Now, we have the luxury of digital photos. We can research online, pick a wedding hashtag and allow iPhone snaps throughout our weddings.