5 Things to Do Before You Take Your Utah Bridal Photos: A Bridals Prep Timeline

If you’re in Utah, you’re familiar with bridals, and why Utah brides and couples love to do a bridal photo session before the actual wedding day. But even if you’re not in or from Utah, doing your bridals ahead of time can be a huge game-changer. Here’s our timeline of 5 things you need to do to prep for your Utah bridals and to make sure you’re ready for your wedding day soon after!

Read all about what bridals are and why Utah couples love them here!

Not only is it a great way to alleviate some of the stress of getting every shot on your actual wedding day, plus the added bonus of a beautiful backdrop in all the bridal portraits, but it’s a great way to get in your ‘trial run’ with your wedding dress and hair and makeup before the actual big day. Every hair and makeup artist will tell you that you need a trial run for your wedding look, so why not put it to good use?

Plus, who wouldn’t want an opportunity to wear their wedding dress more than once?

As Soon As Possible: Book Your Photographer & Florals

This may be obvious, but you’d be surprised at how easily this can slip through the cracks of wedding planning details. You have your wedding photographer, but not everyone considers booking one for engagements and bridals as well.

Here’s a little pro-tip from Team UVB: book your bridals with your wedding photographer! In this article from a local Utah photographer, it goes into why it’s a great idea to book bridals with your wedding day photographer. The main reason? Practice!

You’ll be used to posing with this photographer, get to know each other before your wedding, and therefore be even more prepared to get those once-in-a-lifetime shots on the big day.

As soon as you know your wedding day details, like your date and location, get your bridals session on the books with your photographer. It’s never too early to get it on both of your schedules!

Loop Your Wedding Florist In

In the same vein as booking your photographer ASAP, as soon as you book and/or meet with your wedding florist, make sure you include a bridals bouquet in your floral package. It’s another great way to get a ‘trial run’ in before the actual wedding, to see if there are any tweaks you’d like to make before the big day. Let them know what day your bridals are, and to make sure you or whoever your executive bridal assistant (more on that later) will be, will have time to pick up the bouquet the day of or the day before your photos.

Don’t Forget to Tell Your Seamstress

Oh, and don’t forget to plan your wedding dress shopping and alterations accordingly! You’ll definitely need your gown to be ready to go for bridals. Make sure you’re giving yourself enough time to buy the dress, get it made and sent to you, and altered before your photo session. This is why it’s great to book it as soon as possible; it makes it easier to tell your seamstress the date you need your gown by.

Read our article about how to prepare for your bridal shopping appointments here.

One Month Before

Book Your Hair and Makeup Trial

Odds are your Utah bridal photo session will be within a week to a month before your wedding; by the time your bridals session starts getting close, you should have your hair and makeup artist booked for your wedding day.

One month before your bridals, reach out to your wedding day hair and makeup artist(s) and book a trial run with them for the day of your bridals. It’s two birds with one stone: you get an idea of what you’ll look like or want to look like on your wedding day, and you get to use it for the pictures you’ll be hanging on your walls for the next fifty years.

Meet With Your Photographer to Go Over Your Shot List

A month before your bridals, reach out to your photographer to go over the must-have photos that you want or need from your bridal photo session. Even a quick text or email works, and a video call is even better. Ask your photographer what kind of poses and shots they love for bridals, and ask if they already have a shot list they use!

This will help both you and your photographer know what to expect going into it and be ready for your bridals in a month!

A Few Weeks Before: Figure Out Who’s Coming to Your Bridal Session

If you learn anything from this article, let it be this: less is more! The fewer people you have with you at your bridals, the easier it will be for both you and your photographer to focus on getting the shots and enjoying the moment. Even if it’s just you, your fiancé, and your photographer, that will be enough.

Here’s where you bestow the honorary title of Executive Bridal Assistant!

If you do decide you need an assistant or two, make sure they have your bridals on their calendar, and give them a specific job to do while they’re there. Whether it’s your mom, wedding planner, maid of honor, or your future sister-in-law, let them know exactly what to expect as your executive bridal assistant.

Here are some things to ask them to do for you at your bridals:

Help you in and out of your wedding dress (odds are it’s a multi-person job!)
Help you put in your veil exactly how you want it
Help carry your train, bouquet, and veil between shots
Fix any flyaways, lip gloss, touchups, etc.
Be your biggest cheerleader! Every bride needs a hypegirl to tell you you look good!

A Week to 3 Days Before: Beauty Prep and Relaxation

In the same way that your bridals are a trial run for hair and makeup, floral, and photography (and for you and your future spouse to practice those I’m-so-in-love-it’s-insane smiles), it’s also a chance for you to practice your week-before-your-wedding routine.

Now’s the time to get your nails done, book your spray tan, pluck or wax your brows, and prep all those other beauty needs before your photos. Yes, it’s so you look absolutely amazing in the pictures, but it’s also so you know what to expect and plan for time-wise, leading up to your big day.

You might book your spray tan two days before your bridals, but realize you want to do it three days before your wedding day and plan for that instead. Thank goodness you did a trial run.

Here’s another pro tip from Team UVB: hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! A few days before your bridals, drink more water than you even knew you could before. Hydrated skin is happy, glowing, bridal skin. Book a hydrating facial or get a cheap hydrating face mask a few days before your Utah bridal photos—we all know how dry Utah can get, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.

The Day Before: Pack for Your Bridals

The day before you even put on the makeup and gown and traipse through a wildflower field with your fiancé, make sure you have absolutely everything you need so you’re not stressing between picking up flowers and doing your hair.

After steaming your dress if needed, double-check that your wedding gown, veil, and any other accessories that go with it are safely and nicely stored in a gown bag. And make sure your fiancé’s wedding outfit is packed nicely away too! You’d be so sad to forget a bowtie or earrings.

Team UVB pro-tip: if your bridals will be outdoors, find an old bedsheet or grab a cheap shower curtain next time you’re at the store and cut a hole in the middle. This will help keep the bottom

Don’t forget:

Gown
Veil
Shoes
Hair pieces or accessories (like this stunning lace scarf on Ellie!)
Jewelry
Wedding rings
Bedsheet/shower curtain
Extra hairspray, makeup, lipstick, etc.

Now’s the time to pack your wedding day emergency kit too, just in case. Check out this article to see what your wedding day emergency kit needs!

And last but not least, get good sleep! Put those depuffing eye masks in the fridge before bed, make yourself a nice cup of tea, and get excited! This will probably be the first time you and your fiancé see each other in your wedding outfits; what an exciting milestone in your love story! It’s starting to get real.

A Few More Things to Consider Before Your Utah Bridal Photos

Where will you be changing into your dress and outfits? If you’re taking your bridals outside or in nature somewhere, you might need to dual-purpose that sheet as a changing curtain too; changing in the car is very difficult. Have your executive bridal assistants hold it up for you!

Are you having your dress cleaned between your bridals and your wedding day? If so, make sure your dry cleaner or the store where you got your dress knows you’re bringing it in, and what day you need to have it cleaned by (ideally a few days before your wedding).

One last thing: plan something fun after your bridals! Whether it’s a cute date with your fiancé or a night on the town, you’re going to be all done up fancy-like, you might as well take advantage of it. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your photos to us! We want to obsess over every kiss and dip and floaty veil photo with you.