Most of the photo shoots you see featured on this, and other, wedding blogs will have had weeks, sometimes even months, of preparation. Coming up with a concept, pulling together a crack team of suppliers, finding a location and models, figuring out the perfect time to shoot… But not so for photographers Luisa and Bárbara who live in Portugal.
“Yesterday, a thought came to my mind”, Luisa emailed me on Thursday. “What if we could pull up a Halloween picnic wedding styled shoot in a day, and send it to Rock n Roll Bride?”
Working with friends in the Portuguese wedding industry, she then instantly went shopping, and started contacting friends who she thought could help her out. “We decided we were mad but that we wanted to try! It was 10pm and we went furiously shopping for flowers that had Halloween colours, props and we tried to find the best couple who would serve our inspiration the best. Mick, a body piercer, and his long time girlfriend Wanda, a burlesque dancer, said they would love to be our models (even though we scheduled the shoot for 6am the next morning!) since his birthday actually is on Halloween.”
“We shot Peninha in Sintra, one of the most mystical places in Portugal. Through out the years, this has been known as a place of fairytales, witches and magic. It had to be there… and the fog that came by while we were wrapping up just confirmed it even more. We couldn’t have chosen better.”
“Since we didn’t have much time to come up with the concept, we started from a colour palette of reds, oranges and purples”, she continued. “We also wanted all-black clothes for the bride and groom. We shot in the morning, edited the photos and video in the afternoon and sent them to Rock n Roll Bride that evening, just 24 hours after we started planning it!”
“It was a crazy idea, but we’ve seen so many shoots on blogs, we really wanted to see if we could challenge ourselves in a new way. If we could pull off something beautiful, loving and creative in 24 hours and get it featured on Halloween… well it was a crazy idea and we can’t believe we’ve actually pulled it off! This couldn’t have worked without the amazing team that came together so quickly to work on this. We are all from different companies and brands, but here we had the proof that everybody works better when together.”
“We also think this shoot will help inspire brides and grooms and show them that they can pull off a beautiful, alternative wedding quickly if they have too”, she said. “Since we didn’t have much time, we had to rely on what we could find. We thrifted things (we actually found the luggage in the garbage bin!) some of the décor came from Bárbara’s grandmother, other things I had at home from my own wedding. We mixed it all up together and prayed it would work. And it did! The flowers were bought at two different supermarkets and we made the bouquet at the shoot. The dresses were from our closets.”
“There is nothing cooler that getting married in a Halloween picnic theme”, Luisa concluded. “We did it quickly and we did it with our hearts. A group of people who don’t usually work together working as a team with the intention of creating something unique and exclusively for Rock n Roll Bride!”
Happy Halloween everyone!
The Gallery
Suppliers
- Photography: Luisa Starling
- Photography: Bárbara Araújo
- Video: Hugo Sousa Histórias da Nuvem
- Video: Sam Gillen