First photoshoot experience!

I've always wanted to do a photoshoot with big beautiful dresses and I finally got the chance to do that for my 30th Birthmas. I hired my friend Jess to capture all the photos, you NEED to check her out (click here to visit her website). It was an experience that made me so happy and I will absolutely be doing it more in the future! She can really help me make my dresses page look better, haha!

To prepare for this photoshoot I searched all over the internet for big poofy beautiful dresses and I ended up finding two serious bargains. I got the big dresses off of amazon and the skirt/body suit combo for the cake smash portion were items I already owned. The body suit I got at Forever 21, they don't have that exact one anymore but they always have tons of beautiful options. The big skirt I got years ago at Windsor, this store is my favorite for long skirts! I have many long skirts like this one from them and they are always adding in new pieces to their line! The crown was obviously a necessity because I wanted to go all out for this, I got that off of amazon too! I was not too keen on the idea of getting any cake on any of my clothes and I hate being sticky and having dirty hands so that's when the pink sword came into play! I wanted a pink sword that wasn't a plastic one from a toy or party store so I searched high and low on Etsy and found the perfect match!

Blue Dress | $39.99

Red Dress | $79.99

Crown | $19.99

Sword | $30.00

We ended up doing the dress photos and the cake smash photos on two different days. Somehow daylight savings time popped out of no where and crashed our photoshoot day, so by the time we were done prancing around castles and enchanting gardens it was much too dark to do the cake smash. When we were doing the dress photoshoot portion we went to Harkness Park in Waterford, CT and that day they decided to not open any of their bathrooms! So I ended up hiding behind some bushes while Jess kept a lookout for peeping toms while I changed ballgowns. It was so funny and quite the experience, I had one of those full tulle skirts to put under the dresses to give them that beautiful princess shape so the task was not easy but (as you can see) was totally worth it. I had never had my photos professionally taken before and Jess was amazing at giving me directions so I didn't look like a deer in headlights in every photo. She instructed me when to look away, run, twirl and even adjusted my hair and dress when needed. She was able to capture my first headshot ever!

We did the cake smash portion of the photoshoot a week or two after the dress part. I made 2/3 of the cake out of styrofoam and froze the top part so there was no need to make a second one. I wanted to do a cake smash because just like turning one, thirty is a big deal so cake is a must! I am also a baker so it just seemed right and was so much fun. It worked out that we didnt do the cake smash on the first day because we ended up adding in smoke bombs to the photoshoot too, which we were not originally planning to do! Those photos came out amazing and we both agreed we want to do that again and this time add in glitter too! We had so much fun laughing at the cake flying and the table it was on falling over. We chocked out her boyfriend with the smoke bombs a couple times on accident but he was a champ and really helped us get that perfect placement of the smoke in some of the photos. The day that we did the cake smash part I was not expecting Jess to have me prance around again in a dress, I thought we were going to just use them in the background of the cake photos and boy, was I sooooo happy to do that again! She was awesome instructing me on how to hold the smoke bombs and move around. I only chocked myself and her out about three times each HAHA (sorry Jess!). Smoke bomb modeling is an art form all in its own that I really need to practice before we do our next photoshoot. I highly recommend if you are looking to have photos done (she does many kinds of photography not just lifestyle) to hire her, she is so fun, unique and insanely talented. She is extremely dedicated to her craft and her creativity was a perfect fit for my vision. 10/10 will do again