Top Tips for Having the Perfect Family Portrait Style
November is the month for getting those updated family portraits done! Starting a couple of years ago Miriam (who is one of our lead photographers) and I made a little pact to practice what we preach and get our own annual family portraits done.
Probably the biggest question I get is “What do we wear?” so I’m going to give you my top tips and show you what we did this year!
You can start with one outfit and build the rest on that. I bought this dress months ago and never got to wear it (since Covid uh!) so I built my husband and 2 girls’ outfits around it. We stuck with the navy and neutral color tones.
You could also choose a color palette and have everyone’s outfits coordinate. A fun website I send out all the time is www.design-seeds.com. It’s an interior design website but works fabulously for choosing colors especially if you have a bigger group of people
3. Let your family be themselves. I have 2 girls, Evie is SUPER girlie and will wear dresses 24/7 if she
can. Maddie is the complete opposite and refuses to wear dresses ever! That cute
chambray romper is still a little dressy but it’s not a dress.
4. Dress for the weather. Here in Florida we are actually lucky if it’s chilly enough to wear sweaters
and boots. It’s really hard to look natural and fun if you are super hot and sweaty or freezing.
5. Be flexible and have a backup. Notice the cute sequin top in the photo above and the fact that Evie
is not wearing it in the photos. She has some sensory things and she freaked out and refused to
wear the sequin part so I actually cut the stitches on it so I could take it off! You’ll also see in the
pumpkin ones I had a super cute orange dress that she also did not like and thankfully this one still
worked.
6. Wear something you feel confident and good in. Choose something that you feel like you can take
over the world and look fabulous in! When you don’t love what you’re wearing it totally shows in the
photos.
7. Patterns. You definitely don’t want everything to look too busy so If one person has a pattern try
and keep the other people in solids. You’ll see in our session and Miriam’s only one person has a
pattern on and the rest are in solids.
8. Colors. Typically, if you choose one deeper/more vibrant color and then lighter accent colors it
usually looks amazing. I had the blush and beige in Evie and my dresses and the rest we kept navy.
In Miriam’s family she choose that burgundy with a light army green and Sergio was in white with
sage pants and Leo in light denim.
Here’s the outfits Miriam choose for her family. Even though it’s the same location the colors and style are totally different than what we wore and also looks amazing!!
I wanted to do just a few with my kids and the pumpkin patch so you can see here how their outfits match their personality. I LOVE that orange dress and even cut out the tags so it was totally smooth on the inside but Evie was not having it. So, we did a little wardrobe change and she was much happier. It’s stressful and hard to round up your family to cooperate but it’s SO worth it especially as they grow up so fast!!!
