Picture-Perfect Wedding Pictures

Wedding Supper by Martin van Meytens, 1763

By the looks of things, it appears to be mating—I mean, wedding—season again. Funny, seems like it comes around just about every spring. Well, since everyone else is giving wedding advice, I thought I might as well give mine. These days, the really important thing about your wedding is not the dress, not the food, not the guests. . . You guessed it, it’s the pictures! The photographs! Some silly little pixels that have nothing to do with whether or not you’re actually married!1

Whether this is your first marriage or your first valid marriage, you’ve got to be prepared to show everyone the picture-perfect wedding pictures. Otherwise, not only will your friends and family think your wedding was invalid, they will actually ridicule you, and tell you what an awful couple you are, and how you should have done it all differently.

Not to fear, there is a solution, and it costs less than an actual wedding photographer.2 Now you can purchase stock photos for your wedding that will make you look like Princess Di (before her death—and before her divorce—, I mean). And since these days, people get married on the internet instead of in the Tropics, they come electronically. Everything you need to make your social media wedding a blast for all your fans—I mean, “friends.” And if you are still a tad old-fashioned, you can order prints to put on the walls at home, and in the albums, and show your parents. Even your father will believe you’re really married when you show him the “proofs.”

So where do you find these stock photos? On the internet, of course, where you find everything else in the world!3 Just do a search for something like “wedding stock photos” and you’ll find a bajillion, if that’s a real number. Not that it’s all that important, since most people never see you in real life these days, but it might be good to choose photos of a couple that looks more or less like you and your spouse-to-be: same colour skin, hair, etc. Although, we all know brides are dyeing their hair all the time, so matching the bride’s hair colour is optional. Of course, if you get lots of cropped shots, which look the most glamorous anyway, you don’t have to worry much about the height of the people in the pictures. Try to find a good sequence of the same couple in various poses and scenery, to generate the most convincing wedding. You know, at the hair parlour, in the limo, in the church, at the mediaeval castle reception, bungee jumping on the honeymoon, the typical places couples go.

It’s always nice to add in your family members to make sure they feel included, too. For that, you’ll pay a small additional fee, send them a few photos of each family member, and the stock photographer will photoshop them in. Don’t worry, they look fabulous, and everyone in the family will “remember” your wedding as the best one they’ve ever attended.4

The process of putting together your stock photo wedding is a lot like planning a traditional wedding, with the following advantages:

  • You do it all from the comfort of your computer.
  • You don’t have to deal with sleazy salespeople, or annoying guests.
  • You don’t have to actually fit into the dress.
  • The wedding can be as long or as short as you like.
  • The groom doesn’t actually need to be paying attention.
  • When you’re done the planning, you’re also done the wedding, so you just post your pictures and go to sleep instead of having to go through that long, stressful “performance” day.
  • Nothing goes wrong on the wedding day, it looks a whole lot better, and it’s a whole lot cheaper!

So this year, plan your wedding in style, and have a stock photo wedding! Picture-perfect wedding, picture-perfect pictures, just plain picture-perfect!


Wedding Supper, by Martin van Meytens, 1763. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

  1. So far I haven’t seen any photos that could prove anyone actually made their vows, or intended to keep them.
  2. Last we checked, there was no Bachelor of Arts in Wedding Photography, or any other degree requirement for so-called wedding photographers, just a large price tag.
  3. There is no world outside the computer anymore, you must admit.
  4. If you’re really on a budget, you can use the families in the stock photos, but it won’t give quite the same impression.

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