Weddings that take place in the winter are fantastic! If you are thinking about scheduling your nuptials in December or January, you should definitely do it! Why are wintertime weddings so great? For starters, most wedding venues in Northern VA offer great deals for offseason marriage celebrations. Perhaps more importantly, though, the vibe of winter weddings cannot be beat. Particularly if you hold your nuptials during the holiday season. The decorations, trees and entire atmosphere give your marriage celebrations a festive feel that you cannot get at other times of the year. Definitely more importantly, we have noticed that everyone at holiday weddings seems to be having a lot of fun. And fun marriage celebrations make for really memorable winter wedding pictures!
The festive atmosphere at holiday season nuptial events is not the only thing that helps your wedding photographers get stunning wintertime wedding photos of you and your future spouse. The aforementioned decorations that adorn wedding venues in Northern Virginia make gorgeous backdrops for your couples portraits. The lights, in particular, add magic to the images. They also help give your pictures that critical sense of time and place. Why is that so important? Because it adds context, making it easier for a person viewing them to understand the stories the images tell.
The best part about the lights, though, is the creative possibilities that they open up. As we mentioned above, the best photographers can use them to make magical winter wedding pictures for you. For example, we can shoot through the branches of a tree, turning the lights into blurry orbs in the foreground. Alternatively, we can frame a shot of you that includes lights of many different colors. That makes the background of your photos a dazzling panoply of hues.
The couple in this image held their wedding in Alexandria Virginia in late December. So naturally, their nuptials had a wintery vibe. Their couples portraits, in particular, were a celebration of the season. After they tied the knot at St. James Catholic Church in Falls Church, they dropped off their wedding party at the Carlyle Club for the reception. Then they headed to Old Town Alexandria for their portraiture. We had suggested that they turn this portion of their day into a holiday-themed photo tour of downtown Alexandria. They loved the idea and set aside additional time in their wedding-day schedule to make sure they could do it.
We started at The Alexandrian. That luxury hotel had set up a “Winter Wonderland” outdoor bar and lounge in its central courtyard. We took some shots of the couple cuddling on the couches before heading on to the next stop: City Hall. On the way, we created some beautiful winter wedding pictures of them walking down Old Town’s historic streets. Once we reached that historic building, we took a number of different shots of them near the enormous Alexandria City Hall Christmas tree. In addition to the one posted here, we also got some lovely pictures of them dancing in front of City Hall with the tree looming behind them.
For the portrait posted here, we actually chose to go with a more conservative approach than the ones mentioned above. This particular bride looked so lovely strolling through Old Town Alexandria that we wanted her winter nuptial images to focus solely on her and her new husband. With that in mind, we looked for ways to make the holiday lights a consistent backdrop behind them. That way, the background would have a nice, visually interesting texture but would not distract from the couple.
The aforementioned tree turned out to be perfect for creating that effect. We asked the new husband and wife to get in close to the tree and put a tighter-angle lens on our cameras. That made the portion of the tree directly behind the couple the entire background of the winter wedding pictures we took. To highlight the couple even more, we added a couple of other elements. First, we had them hold a transparent umbrella above their heads. Second, we placed a flash between them and the tree. The artificial light illuminated them from behind, creating some separation between them and the background. When it hit the umbrella, it also reflected some light onto the other sides of their faces. This helped keep them from being turned into silhouettes. The results, as you can see here, were spectacular!
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