One thing that boggles my mind is how my brides spend hundreds, often thousands of dollars on their stunning wedding gown, only for the bridal salon to deliver on a plastic hanger. The same cheap, clear hangers you see polos and button-ups hanging on at a department store. It makes no sense to me! With every step of my couples’ experience with me, I try my best to make sure what I’m delivering isn’t cheapened or lessened by how I deliver it, so the whole plastic hanger thing just confuses me!

But that’s not what today’s post is about. Today I’m touching on a little change my brides do that makes my job a LOT easier on wedding mornings! And that change, my friends? It’s having a dress hanger with NOTCHES!

I know it’s a small thing to write a blog post about, but it definitely makes a difference in photographs! When I show up on a wedding morning, the dress is often still in the garment bag from the bridal salon. And if my bride hasn’t ordered a specialty hanger for her dress, then her gown is usually still on the plastic hanger it came on. So I have two options: 1) Try to scrounge a hanger from the hotel/venue, which sometimes works and sometimes does, or 2) bring my own. I’ve taken to carrying an extra hanger in my car for this very sort of thing, but every once in a while, I forget to replace it and it gets left behind in the bridal suite.

Brides- this is where you come in! If you just make sure to have your MOH snag a nicer hanger from the coat closet before leaving home for the bridal suite, it’ll make a difference in the images of your dress! To be honest, plastic hangers are unattractive and distracting, and my job as the professional is to remove distraction! Hence the nice-hanger-move.

The reason you want to make sure to grab a hanger with notches is because those hanger loops that come attached to your dress? They slide RIGHT off a suit hanger, you know, the kind that don’t have notches. And I can jimmy rig it if I have to with fashion tape, but that’s time I have to spend doctoring a hanger instead of shooting, and puts me behind on the schedule. If your dress doesn’t require those hidden hanger loops to stay hung up, then no worries! But if your dress is strapless, or has a delicate lace top that requires extra support from those hanger loops, we’ll need those notches :).

Some of the specialty hangers, like this one below, don’t have notches built into them. But it’s a stunning hanger anyways, so to modify it, Cristina just added some grippy tape to it. You can’t even tell in the photographs!

And Natalie, who was married this past weekend, had the same hanger (I love my brides), and to make it useable she simply added some clear sticky drops (I have no idea what they’re actually called) to keep the dress on the hanger.

A few examples of how switching up what your dress is hanging on makes a huge difference! See how much more polished and chic these images are?

Also, God bless Vera Wang, queen of wedding frocks. Her gowns are delivered on elegant custom-branded pine hangers, and I love her for it!

Photographers– I definitely suggest adding a plain wooden hanger (with notches!) to your bag. I carry mine into the bridal suite with me in the front pocket of my ThinkTank, so it’s right there if I need it!

A couple resources for elegant custom hangers, if you’re in the market-

• Hunnicut Road (monogrammed engravings)
• BHLDN (I love all of these!)