Wedding Photography Trends Going into 2025

Each year, there are some subtle differences between the weddings the year before, and some things that by next year’s peak wedding season, will be starting to disappear.

Some of these things are fads and phases that will pop up and disappear again, and maybe even come back around like bell-bottoms, and some of them are more like a tectonic shift towards a different way of creating wedding images.

What Are The Wedding Photography Trends, Then?

Drone and Aerial Wedding Photography

The invention of tiny little consumer drones for the general public was an absolutely massive step for aerial photography and videography. What used to require a helicopter or a plane, a pilot, and loads of photo gear is now possible with a little remote control and a mobile. This has opened up a massive new sector of photography and videography that wuickly found its way into weddings. Although they’re not ideal for most of the wedding visuals, drone footage can add some great angles that there is no other way to get. Photo and video of the venue from above and an outside ceremony can boost the feeling of production value of a wedding collection.

Direct Flash

Direct flash is the new obvious must-have for loads of weddings and wedding photographers in 2025. It’s been growing for a couple of years now, and draws inspiration from things like fashion week candids, red carpet photos, and of course, the classic paparazzi flash attack in the street.

There are two basic ways to get the look, which is a punchy, high-contrast light on the couple, and the background dropping away to whatever ambient light is around. The first is to pop the flash on top of your camera, which gives a full paparazzi-style blast, and the second is to use the flash off-camera either on a stand or hand-held. Lots of photographers, myself included, prefer hand-holding the flash becuase it means to can follow the couple, as well as move the flash around as you move. The result of hand holding is a slightly more stylistic light that has become very popular with editorial wedding photographers. Used correctly, direct flash is a great way to inject some really dynamic images into a wedding collection, especially if you have chosen an urban venue, or a classy hotel. After all, who doesn’t want to look and feel like a celebrity for a little while?

Blurry Wedding Photos

Blurry images are back! But there’s a difference behind the blur. In the past, blurry images were usually the result of two things — movement or missed focus. If you think of any ‘classic’ blurry photos you might have seen, the chances are they were shot on film probably with older cameras. This means that the speed of the camera’s shutter would probably have been slower, and the lenses would have been manual focus. Both of those things can leads to what is effectively a blurry image.

However, blur can also be created by the photographer by deliberately choosing to shoot with a slower shutter speed and create motion blur. It is this effect that we’re usually talking about when we say ‘blurry photos.’ Wedding photographers use it in two ways in general — to create blur in something that’s moving in the frame, such as a hand, or a veil, or maybe even a sudden laugh; and to create an overall sense of motion across the whole frame, as if the moment was completely spontaneous and there wasn’t time to move the camera into position.

Blur in images gives a sense of movement, spontenaity and even urgency, while at the same time breaking down the perfection barrier (more about this later) to create images that often feel more believable. If your wedding photographer is a master, you’ll also get images that work better with blur than they would have without it.

Vertical Wedding Photos

Nobody is immune to the effects of social media, and one of the biggest changes that it has wrought is the way we look at images. Back in the days of baby instagram everything was suddenly square, and now everything is vertical — taller or shorter, but vertical.

In a very obvious case of cause and effect, wedding photographers have started shooting more vertical images because we are all looking at, sharing, and making more vertical images. Even though your wedding photography collection is mostly just for you, of course you’ll probably want to share some of your favourites on social media, and the best way to do that is to choose vertical images.

An accidental side effect of this is that wedding photographers are also creating wedding collections that feel more like magazine spreads because a full magazine page is traditionally vertical. This can give your wedding a more editorial look and may even affect your album choice, if you wanted printed photos.

Vertical Wedding Video

The same is true of video — we see a lot of vertical video — but to a lesser extent. We still watch films and series horizontally, even if it’s only on a laptop. Your wedding film or highlight video will almost certainly be horizontal unless you specifically want it to be 100% vertical. That being said, videographers are really taking into account where their work is going to be shared, and starting to make vertical versions, especially reel-length highlight videos.

Wedding Content Creators

Following the theme of social media, one of the things that seems to be gaining popularity is the Wedding Content Creator. What is a Wedding Content Creator, you might ask…and why might we cant one?

So, a wedding content creator is basically an expert in creating social media content that attends your wedding and documents everything, more often than not with a mobile phone, and creates the type of behind-the-scenes content that allows you to see the day from a completely unique guest point of view. The added bonus with a content creator is that the ‘content’ (both photos and video) is usually ready within just a couple of days so you can check it out and start sharing almost immediately.

Imperfect Wedding Photographs

This is a big one. Since social media started to permeate every aspect of our lives, we all became very visually literate very uickly without even realising it. We all started to have more of an idea about how to hold a phone camera so we didn’t look like we had just crawled out from under a bridge, we started to consciously choose better light, and even which side of our faces we preferred.

But now, we are well and truly in the post-perfection era. It seems like we’ve all had enough of trying to make our lives look like a string of wins, with perfect hair and enviable poolside breakfasts. After a few years of striving for perfection we all got a bit fed up and started to veer back towards something a bit more imperfect, or realistic.

That’s actually a bit easier said than done. I’m sure you’ve noticed that iPhone photos are pretty amazing nowadays, they have the cool blurry background, loads of modes to choose from to get a perfectly focussed shot, and multiple lenses on the newer models. Professional cameras are no different, the latest models have all sorts of technologies packed into the modies that mean you can use AI to focus on the eyes, track people around the frame, and even make tiny adjustments to focus after you’ve taken a photo. Software has also taken full advantage of AI image processing, and you can use AI to make a very out of focus image perfectly sharp.

However, we all seem to be at a perfect-saturation point. Too much polished perfect imagery has left us all feeling a bit empty and dazed. Imperfect wedding imagery is making a comeback precisely because it’s believeable. Nothing is perfect, and images striving to tell a story of absolute perfection during a wedding day are starting to feel a bit disingenuous. Blurry images of people dancing, a slightly out of focus groom who suddenly burst out laughing, or an unstaged frame filled with dirty plates, empty glasses, and wedding cake crumbs are starting to fill wedding photography collections, and rightly so — weddings aren’t perfect, you’re not perfect, I’m not perfect, so why wouldn’t you want wedding images that show your actual wedding day, rather than cleverly constructed photographs of staged perfection?

Wedding Photography on Film

Film as a ‘look.’ Film has a ‘soul that digital can’t match. Film is more nostalgic, or timeless, or whatever positive-adjacent adjective.

All true.

And it’s also undeniable that film photography is making a comeback in a big way, Pentax released a completely new analogue half-frame camera, the Pentax 17, Leica re-issued their most classic film model, the Leica M6, and there is a host of other film cameras that are becoming immensely popular again. The same is true of film itself. Companies are even inventing new film stocks, like Harman Phoenix, as demand soars.

But also, in my opinion, the wonders of film are all mostly irrelevant. There are some absolutely incredible wedding photographers who shoot on film, such as Rebecca Yale, and plenty more who will shoot some film as an extra add-on. In the end, though, the ‘look’ and the ‘soul’ and the ‘feel’ of film, especially from the viewer’s perspective, has less to do with the medium, and more to do with the built-in characteristics of film photography. I would argue that most, if not all, of the look and feel of film is actually due to the inherent imperfections of the analogue photographic process. Most of these imperfections are created by functions of the camera and digital cameras work in the same way, using the same parameters.

One last thing that’s worth noting about film is the huge cost of film over digital. A single roll of film costs anywhere from £5 to £30 for just one roll, so wedding photographs on film usually come at a premium.

What Are the Wedding Photography Un-Trends?

Wedding photography, like everything else, has changed and currents of things that come into fashion, and that go out of fashion. And that’s no bad thing. Things that seem cool are often just the result of hype — if everyone is doing it, we want to try it too!
The most famous wedding photography example, for sure, is the selective colour trend of the early 2000s. You know what I mean — a black and white photo with just the red roses in colour, or a black and white portrait with bright blue eyes.

Now we can remember it with fond embarrassment, but having selective colour images in your wedding photography collection is more than just nostalgic — it’s outdated and pretty cringey.

So, what’s on the way out for wedding season in 2025?

The Photo Booth

The classic photo booth machine with a plain or random flat background is on the way out. People seem to be a bit bored of the sameness of the photos, even if they are quite fun. More unique ideas are still quite popular, like a VW camper booth, or an actual photographer doing the shots for you. on the whole, though, couples are looking for other more original ideas — maybe having a polaroid staion, or leaving disposable cameras on the dining tables, of even more modern options like the new 360 video platform.

Wedding Traditions

For a very long time, weddings have been dictated by tradition — religious traditions, social norms, and even the products and services on offer — meant that a wedding almost designed itself. More and more, though, couples are realising that all that stuff is not for them. People are choosing destination weddings, weddings with smaller guests lists, weddings without a full official ceremony, weddings without a sitdown meal, non-traditional wedding attire, relaxed dress codes, unique venues, and myriad other things that are much more aligned with their ideas and personalities than “white-dress-church-with-everyone-I-know-wedding.”

Traditional Wedding Photography

Of course, one of the big wedding traditions is wedding photography, and what it looks like. Staged, posed formal family and couple shots are on the way out, and all sorts of other versions of wedding photography are on the way in. As I mentioned earlier, posing and perfecting and polishing are starting to freak us out so the couple smiling all their teeth at the camera with their arms around each other for their grandparents mantlepiece…it’s starting to be less popular.

The Over The Top Wedding Stuff

Weddings are, for the most part, large expensive events. Even if you’re going to do a DIY back-garden get-together, it’s still going to be more expensive than just a BBQ. However, the pomp and ostentatiousness are slowly taking a back seat, in favour of doing something different. Maybe you as a couple would prefer to travel somewhere with a few family and friends to get married, or create more of an experience for you and your guests on the day, or even extend the celebration over a weekend but ease off the emphasis on massive florals, or designer wedding dresses.

A Last Word From Me

It’s your bloody wedding — do whatever you want. Maybe you want one posed smiling portrait for your gran, perhaps you hate the idea of content creators following you around all day, or maybe you are ethically against film because it’s not vegan. There really are no rules, you don’t even have to get married on the day — you can get hitched an entirely different day at a registry office and then have your own celebration of it however you want with whoever you want. Just make sure to let your photographer (and other service providers) know so we don’t skip over something that’s really important to you.