How important are formal wedding portraits?

Last week I received a late night email from a father of a bride whose wedding I photographed 5 years ago. The grandfather of the bride had just passed away and the family was back in India (this was my first Indian wedding) and was desparately looking for photos of the deceased and some special floral art work he had created for the wedding so they could use the images for the memorial service.

I was honored to have the opportunity to help. Starting at a little past midnight I restored all of the images from the wedding from my archives and then built two separate custom galleries for them. One the first I included all of the images I thought woudl be helpful for them and the second the entire collection of photos from the wedding, just in case there was something I had missed. I was finished at around 1:30am and them the links.

A little after 4am, I received a response back from the father of the bride. He wrote:

Hi rudi,

THANKS YOU VERY VERY MUCH. WE ARE GRATEFUL. AS ALWAYS WE WISH WE HAD TAKEN MORE PICS OF THE OLDER FOLKS. BUT THE PICS OF LATE F-IN-LAW’S (VASU’S FATHER) FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE BEAUTIFUL!

REGARDS,
RAJU

It’s always an honor for me to witness such an important day in people’s lives. It’s especially meaningful when I get to be of further service.

I always tell my clients that it’s important to include the older family members in formal portraits, as they don’t tend to dance as much or get involved so they are in less photos, but it’s so important to document the people who play an important role in our lives while they are here.