|

What to Wear for Family Photos

Not sure where to start when it comes to what to wear for family photos? Today I’m taking you behind the scenes and showing you how I chose outfits for our family photographs last week.

Our annual family photographs are happening in February but I needed an updated photograph of the kids and I for my website and a local photographer friend was happy to oblige.

I often talk about choosing your outfits to complement the room the photographs will eventually be displayed in. In this case the “room” is actually my website so my vision for our outfits was a fair amount of white with pops of pink, green, orange or blue like you see in my logo.

That’s easier said than done at this time of year when everything in stores tends to be a little more muted. Regardless of colour, I wanted our outfits to be casual and knew we’d all be in bare feet.

You can take a look at the video to see everything I bought and how I narrowed it down. Warning…. I’m a huge over-shopper when it comes to outfits for family photographs. I like to have lots of options when I’m back home putting everything together.

In case you’re not able to watch the video right now, here’s what I went with…

What To Wear For Family Photos: The Mom

I always start with my outfit. There are so many cute kids clothes out there that are going to look amazing on my kids, but I usually have to search a little harder for myself. So I start with me and build from there.

I went with an ivory silk short sleeve from The Latest Scoop on Granville and a pair of distressed jeans, rolled up at the bottom. I paired it with simple gold jewelry consistent with my style – a long necklace, stud earrings and a few bangles for my wrist – to keep it simple and classic.

The Latest Scoop has a minimal online store but the Babaton Jenkins blouse from Aritzia and these Citizens of Humanity jeans are fairly similar.

What to Wear For Family Photos: The Kids

I had envisioned my son wearing a green t-shirt (fairly similar in colour to the green in my logo) that he already had along with a pair of jeans. I just needed to find something for my daughter to coordinate.

She’s a girly girl so I picked up a Zara printed tulle skirt in pink for her but then couldn’t really figure out a way to tie it into the green shirt. I also got it in grey but it felt a lot more dressy than this t-shirt and it was also getting darker than what I wanted.

I found this cute mini Boden tunic at Nordstrom that I would pair with a pair of off-white Gap capris (longer length linked). While they definitely worked together, the tunic didn’t look that great on my daughter and I know how much she loves skirts and dresses. Back to the drawing board.

Then I found this dress from Zara and, even though it’s a tad dressier than what I wanted, knew it would look more casual with bare feet.

So then it was back to my son. Because my daughter and I were in such light coloured clothes, I didn’t really want my son in dark denim. I found these mustard coloured pants at Zara and knew we were set. I picked up their basic long-sleeve tee in a few colours so I’d have options when I got home and was good to go.

I ended up going with the white because it looked the best with what I’d chosen for me and my daughter.

What to Wear For Family Photos: Some Final Thoughts

While I love the way everything looked together, it’s a tad too much white/cream/ivory. I’m okay with it here because it works with my website.

Also, if these were portraits of my whole family, I would have had my husband’s outfit to break up some of the white. JCrew has some great causal button-ups right now and I would have gone with either the burgundy, pony brown or bench green for him and it would have looked great.

I also try to avoid getting two entire outfits from the same store – in this case, both my kids are dressed head to toe in Zara. When you only shop at one store you run the risk of looking a little too matchy-matchy and contrived so keep that in mind when you’re pulling together outfits.

Jenn Di Spirito Photography clients are always welcome send me pictures of their outfit options and I will happily help you narrow down your final choices. But hopefully this video helps you get to the initial stage of gathering your options all on your own.

Save