Like every other person in the world, I too looooove me some artsy-fartsy wedding pictures. You know: gritty urban alley, dramatic lighting, Bride in the foreground looking away Groom blurry in the background looking at her….

But! A word (or three) of advice when you are meeting with photographers: be wary of the less seasoned ones (read: new wedding photographers) who go on and on and on about how they are “solely photojournalistic photographers who take none of those boring traditional posed pictures blah blah blah”. I know you probably hate those pictures too because you’re so non-traditional and edgy, but unless both you and your fiance are orphans: YOU HAVE TO GET THE MOM SHOTS. (sidenote: I think I just made up that term, because I’ve never heard it before)

The “Mom Shots” are the family portraits. And if you don’t get family portraits at your wedding you will never, eeeever, hear the end of it from your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, et cetera. And, unfortunately, to get the Mom Shots, people have to be rounded up and put in a formation that will allow the photographer to capture everyone in one picture. So they all have to be squeezed together facing the camera….and that makes it a posed traditional picture. Boring, I know, but when it’s over you and your new spouse can go back to all those awesome pictures of you running through downtown LA. But guess which picture your Mom is going to have framed and hanging in her livingroom? Yup, the Mom Shot.