First Look vs At the Altar with Hunter Ryan Photo

I have Cody Hunter and Tiffany Ryan of Hunter Ryan Photo with me who are wedding photographers, and they going to chat with me about first glance or at the altar. Cody Hunter and Tiffany Ryan are an award-winning nationally published husband and wife destination wedding photography team. The work is most prominently been featured on Martha Stewart, Style Me Pretty, People Magazine and they’ve captured over 400 weddings in their career. The heart behind their lens is to serve their clients through every detail of their wedding day, help cultivate genuine joy, and preserve the legacy of their story for generations. While they love traveling the world for their couples, their favorite place to be is at home in sunny Southwest Florida, sitting on their front porch swing drinking coffee together, you'll breathe a sigh of relief after listening.

In this episode, we'll talk through all the reasons to consider seeing each other before the ceremony and the different kinds of ways you can incorporate it. We'll also talk about how your wedding decisions may influence your spending plan and what difference it makes on your wedding day schedule. Basically, it's all the factors that you should influence your decision. So let's get into the interview with Tiffany and Cody.

So we are here to talk about whether or not to do a first glance, first glance seeing each other, or seeing each other for the first time at the altar. Let's talk about it in two different directions. Let's first tackle what's good about doing the first glance and what is a deterrent from doing the first glance, and then we'll talk about why it's good to meet them at the altar for the first time while it's maybe not the best decision.

Let's talk about the benefits of a first glance. There are really no rules about the timeline of your wedding so it is totally up to the couple what they want to do. A lot of couples want to spend time with their guests during cocktail hour instead of taking photos. Cocktail hours are one of those times where you actually get to talk to people the most and that can be a benefit of doing the first glance. Seeing each other at the altar for the first time can have a lot of emotions and be very personal but you still get that emotion when it is private.

I do try to explain that because a lot of times brides say well, I just want him to see me for the first time at the aisle. I always envisioned that and that's how I felt. I think that if you time it right, then you can still do the altar experience when we have first looks, you know, I let people know this is a private moment. So for us personally, the way we photograph them is we step back with longer lenses. We do not interrupt the moment and we tell them that we say, when you're done, you have to turn out to us and let us know to invite us into your moment because we are not going to interrupt you whatsoever.

That's something that I do think you get in in a first look. So we make sure that they get private time, they can exchange gifts at that point, they can just see each other, they can have a conversation, sometimes our couples pray together, it's just a really cool moment. And we just step back and let it happen.

The other thing that I really find a big benefit to doing it first glance, is that it allows you the opportunity to have everyone who's going to be in those formal posts and get those group photos done before the ceremony. So it's not just about the bride and groom, or the brides and groom getting to go to cocktail hour, it's about your family, your extended family getting to do that, too. Instead of everyone having to stay there during cocktail hour for the group photos.

Depending on how many people you're talking about, you could spend 30 minutes doing those pictures during cocktail hour. So from the guest experience side, the people you care most about might not get to experience that and so that is a huge benefit of doing those photos before the ceremony. Also, when doing those photos during cocktail hour, things can get rushed and you want that to be a time to really get all the pictures you want and all of the combinations of people in those pictures. Another benefit is by doing a first look, you get at least 50% more portraits because there is more time to take those pictures.

Now we can talk about the reasons to not do a first glance. First, you have to extend the day, meaning start earlier and that means a couple of different things. It's a longer portion of the day before you get to the ceremony and you have to mentally and financially prepare for that. There are two things that you have to consider. First of all, if you're going to do a first glance, when you're hiring your photographer and videographer, you're going to have to have them there for a little bit more time, because they're going to be there for that additional time to take those pictures before the ceremony instead of just being one to three things. But again, we already have the benefits on why you know you would do this. And that is something that needs to be considered right off the bat if there's a budget involved.

We have to consider all kinds of weddings, so if you're having a wedding that is a portion of it is supposed to be outside, right or if you have natural light photographers, or you're planning to do photography outside, something needs to be these are things that have to be considered right off the bat beginning of your planning, because you could be up against weather, and that's everywhere in the world. You're up against weather at some point, if you're planning on doing anything outside, even just your photography.

The majority of our couples if they do not do a first look, they have an extended cocktail hour. Also, you have to think about all of the extra pictures that you might want such as walking about of the church or venue or all of the little moments in between. All of these things take time and these are the things that people don't realize that actually are eating into your cocktail hour time. So whatever eats into your cocktail hour time, these might be really important things and we want to capture those for you, we want to make sure that's the biggest thing is, we really genuinely, for us personally want our couples to just have a really relaxed day.

These are some of the reasons we do like first look, or we want to make sure they have an extended cocktail hour is so that nothing is rushed. We want everyone to be present in their wedding day, I don't want it to be all about the pictures, we want it to be a real genuine joyful experience. And the way to do that is just to make sure they have the right timing. And so if you take an overall group picture of everyone, immediately following the ceremony, maybe another 10 to 15 minutes, we could be 25 minutes into the cocktail hour right now. And maybe there's travel time between the church and venue and all of these things eat up time, and we also need to now do all of your family portraits, we have to make sure we do bridal party.

If you time it right, we can get all the things. And then what I think that's just what I want everyone to know is that it all comes down to timing. We personally don't actually do a cocktail hour, if we have someone who chooses not to do a first look, we really recommend that they do a cocktail hour and a half. However, a caveat on that is if it's summer like we said, we can go peel out for an extra 20 minutes or so in the reception time.

But for the most part, you start to see that that cocktail hour starts getting eaten up and you weren't really able to be present in the experience. And so really, that's just what we want couples to make the determination on is what is the most important part of the day for you? Where do you want to be? And how many photos do you want to have? And something to consider is if you've done an engagement shoot, it's generally about an hour, on average. And when you think that you had an hour of engagement photo time to get all those pictures and you weren't in a large dress with heels and a bouquet and things that you know, just kind of slow down the day a little bit and now you only have about 15-20 minutes for your wedding day portraits.

We like the first look because it just kind of makes the day flow a little bit easier. But I think as human beings, we both really do like that. The sacredness of understanding why someone would want to see each other for the first time at the altar. Book. That's why I think we put a big, big emphasis on making sure that the first look is so private.

If you really do want to do your ceremony at sunset, then you really should do a first glance, because I know I've had one of my very best friends who really wanted to get married at sunset, because they wanted natural candlelight showing everywhere. And let me tell you something, that it just would not have been the same feel if it hadn't been at that time. But in order to do that, we did the first glance because of that ceremony time and how they wanted it to feel so romantic. That cut out any opportunity for pictures afterward. So when you want those outdoor natural light photos, they pretty much have to be done in advance.

So I think at the end of the day, the biggest takeaway would be, what do you want your day to look like? How do you want that experience to be? And what are the most important things to you? And then build the timeline to accommodate? Talk to your planner, and talk to your photographer. And don't set the time yet on your invitation until you talked about them. And the videographer, because that's another thing. If you do have a videographer there, there are some, depending on how they want to tell the story for you or layout your story, there may be the time that they need to accomplish things to get things done, especially if they're reading letters and things like that, that have to be set up differently than photography. We're super cognizant of that when we're building out timelines with our couples.

So they need to make sure they're in an audio board when they're at the church, they need to make sure that they have you miked up correctly, for a first look, so you can hear what you guys said because you're going to be so excited. You're not gonna remember and so those are the fun moments, but everything basically just goes down to timing.

Thank you so much for doing this with me during a hurricane. Thank you both so much. I really think this has been enlightening and hopefully, brides and grooms when they listen to this will have a better education on the opportunities that are there for them, and that it really is an option and a choice. And there are so many things to consider when making it.