What Makes a Getting Ready Room Work for Wedding Photos

Short answer: any big window. That is genuinely the whole ask. Not a direction, not a square footage, not a specific suite. If the room you are getting ready in has one big window in it, I can work, and if it does not, that is a lighting problem and lighting is my job, not yours. The best getting ready room I have shot in DFW is The Olana in Hickory Creek, in Denton County. The hardest ones are the dark rooms where the guys get ready, and that is true at a lot of venues rather than at one particular venue.

The getting ready room is the first section of your gallery, and the only variable in it you actually control is the window.

What kind of window does a getting ready room need?

A big one. That is it.

I do not tell couples to look for a south facing or an east facing room, and I am a little suspicious of advice that does. You are not going to stand in a venue tour with a compass working out where the sun will be at 1PM in October, and you should not have to.

Window light has direction to it, which is what makes a face look like a face, and it is soft enough that nobody looks like they are being interrogated. An overhead light does neither of those things.

And when there is no window, I am not stuck. I shoot with a bounce flash on camera, off the ceiling or a wall, specifically so I am not the obnoxious guy with a light stand in the middle of your hair and makeup. No softbox, nothing in anyone’s way. It is a worse starting point than a window, but it is not a dead end.

What is the best getting ready room in DFW?

The Olana. It is the best getting ready room I have photographed, and it is not particularly close.

The reason is the light. The Olana has a genuinely unusual amount of natural light coming into it, enough that during the day I can shoot there without flash at all, which is not something I would say about most rooms in DFW. That changes what the first hour of a gallery looks like. Everything is softer, the colors are truer, and I am not fighting a ceiling fixture for every frame. I wrote about shooting there here: The Olana styled shoot.

If you are touring venues and want the short list of what I know about the rooms at each of them, that lives here: DFW wedding venue guides.

What is the hardest getting ready room to photograph?

The dark room where the guys get ready. Every time.

I want to be fair about this, because it is not one venue’s fault and I am not going to name a villain. It is a pattern. The bridal suite gets the windows, the big mirrors and the good square footage, and the groom’s room gets whatever was left over, which is very often a back room with no natural light in it at all. So the same wedding produces a bright, airy hour on one side and a dim hour on the other, and that is a gallery problem, not a taste problem.

If you have any say over which rooms your party gets, that is where to spend the leverage. Ask what the groom’s room actually looks like.

Do I need to clean the room before you get there?

No. I will do it.

I tidy it myself. I move furniture, I move clothes, I clear the surfaces I am going to shoot on, and the only thing I will ask the wedding party for is a hand moving the bags out of the frame, which takes about 90 seconds and everybody is happy to help.

I would rather you spend that half hour eating something than folding a robe for me lol.

I also bring my own styling kit for the details: mats and linens, ring boxes, trays, putty, stamps. So you do not need to stage anything for the flat lay either. Gather your rings, invitation, jewelry, perfume and shoes into one pile somewhere and I will take it from there.

The one thing couples forget, every single time, is the vow books. If you wrote your own vows, put the books in the pile with everything else.

Can a bad getting ready room actually hurt my photos?

Yes.

A bad getting ready room has cost me a section of a gallery. Not the wedding, not the day, a section; the part of the story that should have opened the gallery ended up thin because there was nothing in that room I could make look like anything. It pushed me to shoot getting ready somewhere else entirely instead, which is now a thing I will suggest when I can see it coming.

BUT, and this matters, that is one section out of a wedding that delivers 600 to 900 images. It is not a catastrophe. It is just a part of your gallery that could have been better for free, which is a frustrating way to lose something.

What if we are not getting ready at the venue?

That is completely normal and often the better call. A friend’s house with big windows beats a windowless suite, and I have suggested moving getting ready offsite for exactly that reason.

The question I always get next is how early you need to be at the venue afterwards, and I am not going to give you a number, because I genuinely do not have one that is true. It depends on how far the drive is, what the venue will let us into and when, whether you are doing a first look, and how many people are moving with you.

I have done a first look 15 to 30 minutes before the ceremony, not because anyone planned it that way, but because the venue would not let us into the chapel any earlier than that. It worked.

So the answer is that we work it out together on the pre wedding consultation, with your actual addresses and your actual venue rules in front of us, and it goes into the day timeline as a real number rather than a guess.

Do we need a second photographer if we are getting ready in two places?

This is the clearest case for one, yes.

A second photographer earns their keep when getting ready is split across two locations, because otherwise one of those two rooms is getting covered by nobody. It adds 100 to 200+ images to the gallery. It is a la carte at $1,200 for 8 hours, and it is included from Estate up, so on Estate at $6,000 it is not an add-on, it is already in there. All of that is on the pricing page, all of it, because you should not have to book a call to find out what something costs 🙂

What I would not do is sell you a second photographer as a getting ready upgrade if you are both in the same building. In that case I can cover both rooms myself.

What does the room actually change about the photos?

Less than couples fear, and more than they would like.

My editing does not change based on the room. I edit for true to life colors, the same way, every time, because the point is that in 50 years these still look exactly how the day actually looked. What the room changes is how much of it I can show you. A bright room gives me wide frames, the whole scene, people in the background being people. A dark room pushes me into tighter frames, closer in, more faces and fewer rooms.

Frequently asked questions about getting ready rooms

What should I look for in a bridal suite for photos?

Any big window. That is the only thing I ask couples for. Not a direction, not a size, not a specific suite. Lighting is my job, not yours, and I would rather you pick the room you actually want to spend the morning in than the one somebody told you faces the right way.

What is the best getting ready room at a DFW wedding venue?

The Olana in Hickory Creek, in Denton County. It is the best one I have photographed. The natural light coming into it during the day is bright enough that I can shoot without flash, which is rare, and it makes the opening section of the gallery noticeably better.

Do I need to tidy the getting ready room before the photographer arrives?

No. I tidy it myself. I move furniture and clothes and clear the surfaces I am shooting on. The only thing I ask for is a hand from the wedding party moving bags out of frame, which takes a minute. Spend that time eating instead.

What is the hardest room to shoot getting ready photos in?

The dark rooms where the guys get ready. It is a pattern rather than one venue’s fault. Bridal suites tend to get the windows and the space, and the groom’s room often gets a back room with no natural light. If you have any say over room assignments, ask about that one.

How early should we get to the venue if we get ready offsite?

There is no honest flat number. It depends on the drive, when the venue will let you in, and whether you are doing a first look. I have done a first look 15 to 30 minutes before a ceremony because the venue would not open the chapel earlier. We work out your real number together.

The short version

Find a room with a big window, put your details in one pile, bring the vow books, and let me handle the mess and the light. That is your entire list!!!

If you want an honest read on which of your prep room options will photograph better, send me your venue and I will tell you what I know about it. I am based in Denton and there is no travel fee anywhere in greater DFW. Let me know if you want to look at dates. If not then no worries!