You’ve booked your photography session – fantastic!! Now comes the hardest part other than deciding what to order after you’ve seen your beautiful images. What on earth are you and everyone else going to wear for your family outfits???

**Note for maternity sessions head to my two maternity what to wear posts:
General Maternity Tips
Summer Maternity Session Tips

My Amy Ro Photography clients have the option of using a wonderful styling site that I provide to them, but in case you don’t, here are a few general useful tips.

My starting point when choosing outfits is to choose who in the family is the hardest on themselves in images. Who is the pickiest? I will say that 90% of the time, from what I have seen in both my family and newborn photography sessions, that is mom. As moms we pick and pull apart the teeniest things about ourselves. We just do. So therefore, if you are mom reading this, I want you to pick the outfit you feel the MOST beautiful in before picking a single other thing.

Once you have selected who is the pickiest, think carefully about where you are going to be doing the photos. Outfits at a beach should have a very different feel and look to them than ones done in a city or in a studio setting. Decide whether you want to be more neutral in your tones or more colorful. Normally you can look at the decor in your home to give you an idea of what you’re more drawn to.

If you choose neutrals, great! Neutrals are easy to combine. Creams and ANYTHING pretty much work well together. And it’s easy to add a pop of color somewhere as well. Moreover, it will match no matter what setting you’re in. Unless that’s Antarctica. That won’t go. 😉

We all tend to know what colors we look good in. (And what we don’t look good in.) But when it comes to picking schemes for the everyone it can be…overwhelming. In general you want colors of the family outfits to blend / to match / to coordinate. This does NOT mean all show up in white shirts and khakis (please pretty please don’t!!) A good super simple place to start is a color wheel, like below. Opposite colors are complimentary. Colors right next to each other are analogous. And within one “wedge” are variations of the same color

So once you have an idea of what color you’d like to do for your family outfits, you can use that color wheel to help pick other colors! And when in doubt, head right over to Pinterest. There are a millllllion color grouping suggestions on there. I saw several just doing a quick look for “what to wear family photography sessions.”

Once you have decided on your color palette, make sure all of the outfits go together in terms of dressiness or casualness . Don’t have someone in a suit coat and slacks and someone else in denim shorts and a tee shirt. You want the family outfits to have the same general feel for everyone in the photos. Overall you want to make a cohesive family group.

Going back to what I said earlier, once this is allll decided, go back to that original picky person we talked about. Pick an outfit for that person and everything else will fall into place. If the main person is wearing a print you can pull coordinating colors from that print for other members of the family. If the main person is wearing solid colors you can echo that color in accessories (bowties, hats, scarves, necklaces, shoes!) for others or choose a print that has those colors.

I promise, the outfits can be overwhelming at first but if you follow these tips, it will get much less so. And when all is said and done, run it by me, or by your photographer! I LOVE to be involved in the clothing selection. Choosing the right clothes can take your images from nice to gorgeous, and take you from happy to thrilled.

And isn’t that the ultimate goal?