Summer Elopement at Krohn Conservatory x Eden Park

Conservatory wedding venues are some of my favorite venues to shoot at!

If you've followed me for a while now (or maybe you can just tell from this post alone), I LOVE color and I LOVE lots of white in my pictures. I think it feels clean and fresh and bright and light, and I even made a whole blog post on all-white wedding venues in Chicago! (There's also a post for NYC garden outdoor garden and loft wedding venues here.) This styled wedding at Krohn Conservatory and Eden Park in Cincinnati was no exception. The bright, summery colors of the bouquet by Nina's Floral Design

I wanted to make sure I got a few pictures of this gorgeous peony and rose bouquet on its own, and all the white windows and glass at Krohn Conservatory made it the perfect, easy backdrop. I took some extra greenery from the bouquet to really simply complement the yellow gold ring, that humungous rock, and of course the bold, blue ring box. As much as I love lots of bright white and airiness in my pictures, I'm a sucker for some contrast too, and the dark blue provided just the right amount.

Why Conservatory Wedding Venues are Great

Conservatory wedding venues are a great option for people who want something a little bit non-traditional, don't want to have to spend extra money on too much decor (hellloooooooo, being surrounded by plants!), and love the feeling of openness and airiness in their wedding pictures. Krohn Conservatory is the obvious go-to in Cincinnati, but a few other awesome conservatory wedding venues in cities that I frequent are Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Palm House (more NYC garden wedding venues here!), and the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco.

Conservatory weddings invite that warm summer feeling we're always after into your wedding year-round, which makes it the ideal place to get married during off-peak season. You can save money on both the venue and the decor--two birds, one stone (and extra moolah for that honeymoon in a place that's actually warm outside at the time).

Details, details, details.

Coleen's etherial gown peppered with flowers on the bust and down the train paired so well with pearls, which tend to be a little softer than diamonds without losing that feeling of feeling super glam and gorgeous on your wedding day. I loved to really get up close and show all the details off, and then let this lady soak up all her praise while I got a shot that showed her entire gown in front of Krohn Conservatory.

One difference between a styled shoot versus a real wedding is the timeline--a wedding day, no matter how much extra time you schedule in, can always get behind. Plus, I want you to have fun and party at your own wedding as much a you want, which means sometimes time for pictures is a little bit more limited. Check out this post on planning your wedding day timeline.

In a styled shoot though, I pretty much get to take as much time as I want, which means lots of tiny little changes until I get the *exact* photo that I want. Even at styled shoots, things don't always come together exactly as I hope or planned for, but this one was exactly what I was hoping for. I can only say it so many times, but the all white of the venue, the color in the flowers, the details of the dress and jewelry...I love it so so much. This is one of the weddings/styled shoots that I really feel like represent what I have always wanted my style to be. There is a fine line between having bright white photos and having them so overexposed you can't see any of the details (that you as a bride or groom are paying a LOT of money for), and I feel like this shoot really gave me the time and practice on perfecting it.

Given that so many weddings are cancelled and postponed in 2020, it was really, really helpful to get some time to shoot a wedding again, even if it was a styled one. Practice never hurts, and in this case, I feel like it made my skills 10x more refined.