Part 3 of our four part winter bridal spotlight found us at the amazing Hall of Springs in Saratoga Springs, New York. My goal of this entire 4 part photo shoot was to get a series of winter snow shots at the Hall of Springs. The biggest challenge proved to be scheduling the snow!
I scheduled 4 different days as potential shoot dates dependent on the weather. The day before our first potential shoot date the Weather Channel predicted snow starting at 5p going through the following night with 100% chance of snow the afternoon of our shoot. With this promising of a forecast I called up Jessica from Angela’s Bridal to make sure she was able to join us the next day with the dresses. I called Alayne and her team at Make Me Fabulous to ensure that her schedule was flexible to do Sarah’s hair and make-up the next morning and to join us in the field. I called David Michael Schmidt from Renaissance Floral and put in our order for the bridal bouquet. Our model Sarah von Ouhl was on board and we had the full team ready to go to shoot in the snow the next day!
Where is the snow??? Showing up at the Hall of Springs the scheduled snow was nowhere to be seen. With the forecast still saying that it was going to snow that evening I adapted our shoot to start under the cover of the Portico. The magnificent columns provide a classy greek ambiance any time of year and in this case worked perfectly to showcase the Hall of Springs without the snow.
After finishing our segment in the Portico the snow was starting to come down, but there was still not enough on the ground to be able to do any decent winter photography. Thankfully the girls from Angela’s Bridal and I had come up with a contingency plan in the off chance that we had no snow. We went to the far side of the Saratoga Spa State Park with Sarah and a dress that would NEVER come back the same again! (Part 4 of our series features a trash the dress sequence in the mud)!
After our detour in the mud, Jessica (Angela’s Bridal) and Jessica (Make Me Fabulous) went to work cleaning Sarah up. Seldom does a hair and make-up artset have to deal with what we put Jessica through, but she did a “Fabulous” job! After an hour of warming back up and crazy hair and make-up magic, Sarah was ready for the final segment of our photo shoot; dancing in the snow infront of the Hall of Springs.
Thankfully the snow was coming down pretty hard by this point and there was enough of a base for us to do our night segment. For this segment Jessica and Janet from Angela’s Bridal picked out a stunning wisteria gown by Lazaro (Style #3269). This bridal ball gown features sheer ivory lace with a corseted sweetheart bodice.
My favorite part of this fantastic gown is the accent colors in the lace; the blues and purples really looked spectacular with the stark contrast of the snow and columns of the Hall of Springs! It was am amazing day! – Dave Bigler
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