What to wear to your pre-wedding shoot

Your outfits will decide how the photos feel more than any location will. Here is the brief I send every couple.

A pre-wedding shoot is the only time in the whole wedding where you choose everything: the place, the time, the clothes and the pace. Most couples spend weeks on the location and twenty minutes on the outfits. It should be the other way round.

Coordinate, do not match

Pick one colour family and let each of you wear a different shade of it. Sage and olive, rust and cream, navy and dusty blue. Identical colours flatten you into one shape in a wide frame.

Bring two looks at most. One traditional, such as a light lehenga or a kurta with a waistcoat, and one Western or semi-formal. Three outfit changes in a two-hour shoot means an hour of changing in a car.

Avoid tiny prints, logos and neon. Tiny checks shimmer on camera and logos date a photo faster than anything else. Solid colours and texture, such as raw silk, linen or chikankari, photograph beautifully.

Shoes and hands

Wear shoes you can walk in on grass and old brick. At Lahore Fort or the Shalimar Gardens, you will walk about two kilometres during a shoot. For the bride, a pair of flat khussas in the bag saves the day.

Get your nails done and keep jewellery simple. Hands show up in more frames than people expect, holding each other, resting on a shoulder, adjusting a dupatta. They are half the story in a close-up.