Connecticut Wedding Photography
The Wedding Experience
Congratulations! You're engaged and soon to be married, which means it's time to celebrate!
Arturo and I have photographed weddings in Connecticut, New York, and beyond. I got my start in the Connecticut wedding photography industry over 10 years ago, and Arturo followed a few years later. We’ve had the privilege of photographing some of the sweetest people, documenting their lives, and sharing their stories. We're lucky to work with exciting, fun, and authentic couples who are truly, madly, deeply in love. Our favorite weddings include plenty of natural light, meaningful personal details, and a first look. We enjoy shooting at estates, vineyards, historic mansions, venues along the New England coast, and locations with plenty of outdoor space to bring the beauty of nature into your photographs.
Full Wedding Collections begin at $4999
Wedding photography is an investment that you’re sure to enjoy with your partner, children, and grandchildren for decades to come. After the food is eaten, the cake is cut, the music and dancing have finished, all you walk away with after the celebration is over is a new spouse and your wedding photos! Photography is more than just images, it’s a real part of your day. Not only do you deserve beautiful images, you also deserve an amazing photographic experience.
We’ve made our wedding photography coverage options simple and easy. All collections include at least 8 hours of wedding day coverage, two photographers, private online galleries, high resolution digital images and a complimentary engagement session. To learn more investment details for The Wedding Experience, as well as photography coverage for intimate weddings and elopements, please fill out our Wedding Inquiry Form.
Planning a more intimate soirée?
Photography coverage for intimate weddings begins at $1199 for a two-hour minimum.
The Process & What to Expect
Save That Date
Our wedding day was one of the best days of our lives, and having the opportunity to be a part of yours is something we're incredibly thankful for. To book your wedding date, we will send you an online contract which you’ll be able to sign electronically. When we’ve received your retainer payment and signed contract, you’ll officially be a Shaina Lee Couple!
The Engagement Session
Once you’ve booked your date with us, we’ll send you our Engagement Session Planning Guide, which covers everything from what to expect, location ideas, outfit inspiration and so. much. more. Think of your engagement session as practice for your wedding day. You’ll become more familiar with how we work as photographers, which will help you to establish a new level of trust with us. By the time your wedding day arrives, that trust re-emerges, which will help you feel much more relaxed in front of our cameras. Your engagement photos will be delivered to you in a private online gallery with a print release, from which you’ll be able to download them directly to your computer.
Wedding Day Details
About 6-8 weeks before your wedding date, we’ll send you a questionnaire to fill out regarding the details of your wedding day. Gathering this information helps us to build a photography timeline for your wedding day that keeps us organized so we can capture the moments which are most important to you! In the event you’re working with a wedding planner or coordinator, we’ll work alongside them to create a final timeline that assists both the photography schedule and the day-of schedule. Timelines are essential so you have dreamy, romantic portraits and high-quality photographs to remember your wedding day by. Once we receive the responses to your questionnaire, we'll set up a time and date to review everything together so we're all on the same page.
Time for the I Do’s
After months of planning, your wedding day has arrived! This is the time for you to relax while enjoying the people around you who have come to celebrate this new season of your lives you’ll be starting together. We're excited to get to know your families, best friends, and those who have shaped you into the people you are today!
The Wedding Gallery
Once your final wedding photographs are edited, we’ll deliver them to you in another private online gallery, similar to the one from your engagement session. Since you’ll have more images from your wedding day than your engagement session, we organize the images into folders from each part of the day.
Heirloom Wedding Albums
Our heirloom wedding albums come from a top-quality lab in the industry that works strictly with professional photographers. If you choose a wedding collection with an album, we’ll design it for you to tell the beautiful story of your wedding day through your photographs. Afterward, we’ll send you a design proof, to which you’ll have the option of adding images and pages. Once you’ve approved the proof and chosen the color and cover material of your album, the design will be sent to our lab for production!
Do you want to hear all about the full wedding experience and investment details?
Click the button below to get the conversation started about your wedding day!
Wedding Photography in Connecticut, New York, and New England
We're based in Fairfield County, Connecticut and serve the Greater New York City area, but we love traveling just as much as we enjoy being photographers! Arturo and I are always up for an adventure, especially if our photography is taking us there!
Questions? Click here to read the FAQ's!
Planning a destination wedding is one of the most exciting experiences you'll ever have. As a wedding photographer who has photographed various destination celebrations, I've found that the most beautiful wedding galleries don't happen by accident. They are the result of thoughtful planning, intentional decisions, and a wedding day designed with both experience and photography in mind.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know how much I’ve written about the importance of planning timelines and logistics when it comes to your wedding day. You’ve probably read my posts about planning sufficient portrait time and the benefits of doing a first look on your wedding day. They both touch upon how wedding timelines and logistics are incredibly important to plan out so you can maximize the enjoyment of your day!
After you get engaged and the wedding planning begins, it’s easy to get caught up in everything you have to accomplish to pull together your big day. Setting a budget, making a guest list, venue hunting, booking vendors… the list goes on. However, as you embark on the journey of wedding planning, these basics are quite often overlooked!
For months, there’s an endless flow of planning that happens to ensure you have a wedding that will become one of the best days of your lives together. Stress is inevitable during the planning process (even if it’s just a small bit), but have no fear! It’s quite possible to avoid any stress on your actual wedding day!
There are a variety of things to think about when planning your engagement session, especially when it comes time to choose where you want your photos taken. I’m sharing a few tips on how to choose a spot for your engagement portraits that best suits you!
After photographing countless weddings, and learning the differences between great wedding prep locations and the not-so-good ones, I’ve compiled a list of things you’ll want to ensure your space has for dreamy detail shots and portraits!
Until many couples get into the nitty-gritty of planning the timeline of their day, there aren’t too many who think about how their ceremony, allotted portrait time, and cocktail hour actually correlate! They often don’t realize that fitting family portraits, wedding party portraits, AND portraits of the two of them into a 30-minute window aren’t realistic. There are many details to consider when planning different parts of your wedding day, and I hope this post helps give you some additional insight into planning with your wedding photography in mind!
When you put a team of wedding professionals together to execute your celebration flawlessly, it’s important to know that we do more than just show up, do what you hired us to do, and go home. There is SO much more that we work on behind the scenes to make sure your experience with us is a fantastic one!
This blog post is a far off topic from what I normally write about, but it’s been on my mind (and heart) lately so I felt compelled to share it with you! The pieces of information I’m writing about may not even be on your radar if you’re not in the creative or photography industries, and that’s okay. You’re never too old to learn about something new!
Is planning a wedding during a global pandemic less than ideal? Of course it is, but don't let it steal the joy and reasoning of WHY you're getting married in the first place! Whether you're planning your wedding for this year or next, I'm sharing a few tips on how to make it through without (too much extra) added stress.
With elopements and intimate weddings happening all over the world due to the current pandemic and limitations on gathering sizes, I was inspired to put together a list of some of my favorite venues that would be perfect for weddings of these sizes!
It seems like so many different publications have their own list of arbitrary questions couples should be asking their potential photographer, but do all of the people writing these articles have any actual experience as a wedding photographer? Why waste precious minutes going over details that ultimately won’t make a difference or benefit you in the end? Your time is valuable, especially while you’re in the middle of wedding planning and trying to find the perfect photographer who fits with the two of you! The following list of questions is what Arturo and I have found to be most significant while chatting with our couples about their wedding photography. These are REAL questions asked by our REAL couples!
Jamie and Taylor were married this past February at The Inn at Longshore in Westport, Connecticut. Winter weddings are some of my favorites, and their elegant celebration did not disappoint! Arturo and I absolutely adore these two, so designing an album for them was so much fun!
While some of our couples know they definitely want to share a first look together on their wedding day, others are a bit more hesitant, which we totally understand! There are so, so many positive ways doing a first look impacts your wedding photography timeline, so I’m sharing them here. This post will be especially helpful for those of you who are having your cocktail hour start as soon as your wedding ceremony ends!
If you’re in the midst of planning, please know that your vendors want to carry out the vision you have for your wedding day. I know that relinquishing some of that control can be hard during wedding planning, but friends, I’m here to tell you it’s okay to put your TRUST your wedding vendors!
For some couples, a wedding planner is one of the first vendors (if not the first) they’ll hire to help with the planning of their big day. Other couples may not fully see a planner being a worthwhile investment for their wedding. If you and your partner happen to fall into the latter category, I want to explain a few reasons why you shouldn't quickly dismiss the idea of hiring a wedding planner! As a photographer, I’ve photographed weddings where a planner was on site and others that didn’t have one involved. In my overall experience, weddings that did have a planner always result in a much more relaxed (and less stressful!) day than those without.
Once I arrive at the bride's wedding prep location (or Arturo to the groom's) and give her a "Happy Wedding Day!" hug and congratulations, I'll start photographing her details before moving onto candids of all the beautiful ladies during wedding prep. I'm sharing a bit of what it's like on my side of the camera, as well as some additional wedding prep detail tips!
As a wedding photographer, I've had the pleasure of collaborating with a variety of talented wedding vendors, including everyone from event planners to florists to DJs to stationery designers and more. I'm thankful to have worked alongside such talent in so many areas that help to bring a couple's wedding day to life!
Searching for a wedding venue is possibly one of the hardest tasks of wedding planning, and is also the biggest piece of the puzzle! Now that we're at the tail end of engagement season, I know there are plenty of couples out there starting to search for a venue and set the date that they'll be saying their I Do's. If this sounds like you, I've compiled a list of some of my favorite qualities in a wedding venue and a few recommendations too!
When your wedding day arrives, we want you both to feel like it is being captured by friends rather than two strangers who you hired simply to document your day. We enjoy getting to know our couples on a personal level before their wedding arrives, and the engagement session plays a big part in allowing us to do so!
While there are plenty of brides-to-be who want a night out with her best girls to celebrate, there are many more who don't want to go the traditional route when it comes to the bachelorette party. After seeing many brides-to-be stray off the traditional route, I've rounded up some fun alternative ideas which I'm so excited to be sharing with you!
The First Look: a wedding planning topic I'm super passionate about! This part of the wedding day takes place before the ceremony, and is when the wedding couple see each other for the first time in their wedding attire. Words cannot describe the emotion and excitement you two will feel during these tender moments!
More than ever, I've recently had a quite a few of my clients inquire about bringing their dogs to their engagement sessions. I always tell them to bring their furry friends along with them, because it allows your session and photos to be more personalized! I've come a long way from the first session I ever photographed with a couple and their pup, and have gathered a few tips to prep my clients (and their fur babies) to make sure their session goes smoothly!
As a bride and wedding vendor, I love being able to give couples who are quickly approaching their wedding day tips and advice whenever I can! Today, I'm writing about a few items that Arturo and I may or may not have forgotten to add to our wedding day budget. They say hindsight is always 20/20, right?
"What if it rains on my wedding day?!?" All couples planning their big day face this thought, especially if you're going to have all or part of your wedding outdoors. As a bride who experienced rain on my wedding day, I have a few tips to share with those who have this same concern!
Let’s Chat
Our business is an extension of us, which is why we put our hearts and souls into everything about your wedding day. Arturo and I believe a wonderful photography experience starts long before we pick up our cameras to photograph you. Such an experience is built upon a comfortable, fun, and relaxed atmosphere. We truly cherish getting to know our clients, especially since we'll be spending your entire wedding day together! Our goal is for us to build a genuine friendship, all while giving you a wonderful and exciting experience along the way.