Back in January, when I went to visit my sweet Canadian friends in Banff, I learned a few things about styling. Since I learned those things, I started doing more and more research about it, and this blog post was born. Here are 5 tips for styling invitation suites on a wedding day!

Curate/Find Details to Add

One of the easiest ways to elevate the general look of your invitation suite images is to add details from the day! I love adding flowers, jewelry, or any of the other bridal details to my invitation shots! They not only give those image that little KICK, but they also help keep things fluid and help curate the day! I also like to find a background that matches with the invitation or the theme! Some of my most favorite things that I added to my arsenal this year are styling boards from Heirloom Bindery! I have four different color boards from them and they just give me nice clean background, and I bring them with me to every wedding!

Let there be LIGHT!

You’re a photographer, and you’re probably ALWAYS looking at light differently than other. That should be no different when you’re photographing the invitation suite! I like to find nice even light for my invitation shots, but if you have more of a moody, dramatic mood to your images, and it ADDS to the image, feel free to play around with angles, and shadows! 🙂

Shooting at f1.4 Should NOT be Your Final Answer….

When shooting details, I’m very rarely at f1.4. Unless i’m shooting a full shot of the shoes, or the dress, or any other BIG detail, i’m usually shooting anywhere from f4 to f11. There’s so many little details to get in focus when you’re styling invitations, and the worst is when your letters aren’t even in focus! THE WORST! Generally a good rule of thumb is if there are 3-5 items in the image, then shoot at least at f4. This will help everything remain in focus.

Switch It Up

It’s important to get that “safe shot” like with most things of the wedding day, but if time allows, I like to try to shoot the suite in 3 different ways for diversity! You can have one set of images with the invitation lined up, then you can slowly work your way into a more messy style! It gives you some different options for your details images! Another way to mix it up is to shoot both vertical and horizontal, and then get in closer for details.

Elevate the Invitation

You want to elevate the invitation and the easiest way to do that is to LITERALLY elevate the invitation. My sweet friend, Raelene Schulmeister, gave me the grand idea of using staples to help elevate the invitation, but you could use your phone (assuming you don’t have a giant iPhone 7 plus like me…haha), or whatever else you can find that will give you just a little difference in height for your paper goods. Another good way to bring the attention to the invitation is to style things left to right. Naturally that’s the way we read things (at least in English) and with your invitation on the left side, it will draw the person looking at the image from the left to right.

These are just a few ways to help make those invitation suites look EVEN BETTER than you have been, but it’s also ok to break all these rules and do it your own way! Be creative with it! Show off those details! Let’s make pretty things even more pretty! 😀

What are you favorite ways to style invitations?