“Ali is the absolute BEST at her job, and a great human to spend time with. We feel so lucky to have met Ali and that we were able to work with her for our wedding. There are a lot of reasons to work with her, but a few for your consideration: 1. She’s a crazy talented photographer. Ali will make your photos feel like the most beautiful, special memories. We have gotten so many remarks from friends and family about how beautiful our gallery is (and also about how great Ali was on the day). 2. Ali will feel like your bestie. This wasn’t something we had necessarily sought out in a photographer, but it makes such a difference. She has a knack for helping you to feel natural and comfortable in front of the camera. Like you WILL want to be best friends with Ali after working with her. 3. Ali knows how to capture memories and feelings, not just images. When we look back at photos from our wedding day, we get to relive the big, joyful, wild feelings all over again. Plus she caught moments we didn’t even realize were happening. This was something super important to us when picking a photographer, we wanted our photos of the day to feel natural and organic vs posed- and Ali was a magician with this. Somehow even our posed photos look organic. 4. It is palpable that Ali cares about her couples and her craft. She took time to figure out what mattered to us (the moments we really wanted captured, the people we wanted images of, the feel we wanted to our photos).Bonus: Ali has experience photographing concerts- I feel like it can be hard to get good dance floor photos due to the lighting but the photos Ali is able to get are truly epic.” -Em and Isaac

You can always tell when a photographer builds a wedding venue.

The lighting is impeccable. The walls are the right color. The groom’s suite isn’t in a dungeon for a change. Every detail feels effortless— because they obsessed over it. (Kettle. Pot. Black.)

Pinewood in Cambridge, Minnesota is one of those rare places that practically defines posed wedding photography done right—intentional, artful, and emotionally alive. And I had been gasping to shoot there when Emma and Isaac waltzed into my inbox. Serendipity much?

Two of the kindest, warmest, gentlest people on the planet (literally, veterinarians, both of them), armed with an 80-person guestlist, a rockstar of a planner (I love you, Lily. Call me.), and a vision for wedding photos that both me and Pinewood were made for. 

(Seriously, if Ali Miller was a wedding venue, Pinewood would be it.)

Posed wedding photography that didn’t lose any of its authenticity was the brief. It only takes one TikTok doom scroll for you to understand why this flooded me with fresh creative energy.

Posing people is easy. But I don’t want easy. I want real. Raw. The kind of the raw that just so happens to photograph very f*cking well.

Candid vs Posed Wedding Photography: Finding the Balance

Wedding photos are a delicate blend of opposites: the planned and the unplanned. The portraits and the belly-laugh candids. The family photos and the doc-style photography I absolutely die for over and over again. I photograph them all. (Except flatlays. Unless you’re into it.) 

But I started to notice that when it came to the posed planned portion of their wedding session, my couples… changed. They stopped being themselves. The awkwardness set in. The “photo face” went on. 

Suddenly, the very people they had fallen in love with became someone else entirely because they felt they had to. 

And it was KILLING me.

Me, the same wedding photographer known to out-ugly-cry Aunt Sue when your partner vows: “When you wander, I will explore by your side; when you wonder, I will encourage your dreams; when you waiver, I will steady your stride; and when you are weaker, I will carry our team.” (Holy sh*t, Isaac). 

Me, your ride-or-die— studying family dynamics between light readings so I can be your buffer in both.

The last thing I want for you is a forced photoshoot without feeling because we’re too focused on the ‘fine art’ aesthetics. Imagine that. (No, actually don’t). 

Your wedding photos–planned and unplanned–should feel like you. Not some beautiful stranger in a pose. 

So I decided to do something about this myth of placid, posed wedding photography. And with that, Emma and Isaac officially became the first couple to get a pre-wedding questionnaire.

The first question I asked: “How do you want to feel during your individual portraits?” (Note: Not look. Feel.)Their answers would decide how I would guide them so that even the posed photos looked effortless as all get out. And holy cow, did Emma and Isaac deliver.

Bridal Getting Ready Photos That Altered My Brain Chemistry (And Changed How I Approach Posed Wedding Photography)

Emma said, “I want to feel chic, like I was plucked out of a painting, but also relaxed, candid, and myself.” 

I said, “Say less.” But also: preach from the mountaintop, because that is music to my whole damn soul. 

So that’s exactly what I gave her. Not cues for the perfect editorial bridal portraits and a strict shot list. Space to feel how SHE wanted to feel on her wedding day. 

Yeah, I placed her in places that would make her feel plucked from a painting. Indeed, she was wearing the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen in my life (like hooooly sh*t, Vivian Westwood). 

But I also knew that she felt her most herself around her family. So I let them live in her bridal photos (without them even knowing). I mean, why would I crop out her sister’s arm when her sister is the whole reason Emma is smiling? 

That was the real-ness of Emma’s wedding day: clothes passed around; an earring adjusted; Emma giving the most glamorous, fifties-coded, candid portrait in her makeup chair while her people curled their lashes in the mirror beside her.

Hand on heart, I can say nothing was posed. But it was planned— covertly choreographed with Emma’s feelings in mind. (Make no mistake: forcing someone into a pose is deciding how they get to feel. And we don’t do that around here.)

These bridal getting ready photos have quickly become some of my favorite frames I’ve ever taken, singlehandedly proving that emotion trumps instruction every damn time.

Groom Portraits That Look Like They Just Happened (Except They Didn’t)

Chic was not Isaac’s vision. 

Groom portraits in his mind meant less GQ cover man and more golden retriever in a tux. He wanted to feel goofy. Playful. Himself.

For a guy whose first instinct in front of a camera is to hide his smile, honoring that request felt sacred.

The Posed Wedding Photography playbook says I could’ve sat him down, kicked everyone out, and say, “Okay, look at me and laugh.” Good thing I shredded that sucker 100-plus weddings ago, because how uncomfortable is that?

Instead, I sat him down, kicked his brothers into unhinged gear, and let them do the heavy lifting. To this day, I still don’t know what was happening behind me, but they did exactly what I knew they would: they cracked him up. They brought out exactly what we’d planned for, but certainly hadn’t posed: the joy, the looseness, the kind of playfulness that can’t be faked.

It felt in the moment. It looked in the moment. 

But it wasn’t any more unplanned than that world map I scouted weeks earlier—the one hanging in the groom’s suite, tracing every place Isaac and Emma loved and lived in.

Or how every nook, cranny, and candle-lit dinner table in the Pinewood caught the natural light in a way that made me absolutely feral. 

It takes a lot of intention to make getting ready photos feel so totally UN-intentional. And that’s the whole point. 

They don’t need to know how much I’m quietly (and kinda creepily) orchestrating— how much thought I pour into their photos before I take them. All they need to think is “oh cool we’re just taking pictures.”

I mastermind. You experience.

Posed Wedding Photography That Captures Memories, Not Just Images

“When we look back at photos from our wedding day, we get to relive the big, joyful, wild feelings all over again…” 

I used to think the best wedding photos were the ones that just happened. The spontaneous laugh. The unplanned tear. The wind that knows exactly when to move the veil.

But lately, I’ve realized something— something I kinda, sorta, always deeply knew: real emotion doesn’t happen instead of planning. It happens because of it. 

Emma and Isaac said hello to forever under a canopy of trees in Cambridge, Minnesota. They toasted espresso martinis to those celebrating from above the clouds. Every guest and vendor received a handwritter letter of gratitude. And everywhere you looked was dashed with butter yellow. 

How could I be anything but proud of the film for this wedding? 

Em and Isaac are salt of the earth— people you can’t quite believe are real, let alone that you get to love. Of course, every posed portrait and grainy candid felt intimate yet wild. 

We gave ourselves the permission slip to focus on emotion and story, not the design aesthetics and details shots. I don’t take photos of that stuff unless you really care about it. 

Which I’m sure is why I’m getting passed on by 99% of bridal magazines. But that’s not what I do this for. 

I do this to snap your older brother flipping your mom during the silent disco.

To preserve your sister’s husband beaming at her with pride while she toasts her baby sister. 

To catch the last rays of sunlight in 35mm, as they spread across the table arrangements you, your florist, and your planner co-created (seriously, call me, Lily). 

I know the industry loves a good flat lay, but I’ll never spend precious time lining up earrings next to an envelope when your grandma is crying in the next room. 

And maybe that’s why I’m not the photographer vendors pass around in their group chats— but I’m fine as f*ck with that. Because I don’t shoot for them. I shoot for the couple who, years from now, will look back and feel that day again.

I shoot for your story, not for the spread.

If that’s what you mean by posed wedding photography: I have a questionnaire with your name on it.