Pre-Wedding Boudoir Photoshoot for Mrs S at Hotel de Vie

I’ve been dying to blog about this since I shot these pics last month – Mrs S came for a boudoir photoshoot as a present for her husband-to-be, and as it was a surprise, I wasn’t allowed to share the pics until after the wedding! Luckily she has allowed me to show just a few pics from the shoot 🙂

We arrived at Hotel de Vie in the morning, where we were greeted by Jason, who sorted us out with cups of coffee and snacks. Mrs S had her hair and make-up done by the lovely Natasha Wiggins, who got her talking and eased any nerves she might have had! We decided to go for gorgeous curls, and even though Mrs S had brought hair extensions with her, we decided not to use them, because we didn’t want her hubby-to-be not to even recognise her!

After hair and makeup was finished, we went into the scarlet suite to get ready for our shoot. We had a chat about what she’d brought to wear, which was actually quite a lot, so decided what was most important and what would look best (I actually got a frantic text from her on the way to the hotel saying she was going to stop for tights on the way (!) but luckily I had a few pairs of stockings to choose from – I always have backups!). Mrs S is also a very talented photographer, so she had a good idea of what she liked, but was so lovely to completely trust me with most of it and let me loose to be creative! 🙂

I’d just like to say, believe it or not, Mrs S is a Grandma!! Yes you read that right. Doesn’t she look stunning?! This just proves that age, size and shape doesn’t matter 🙂 She was so worried about her tummy because she’s had 3 kids, but after the shoot she sent this lovely message to me:

“You made me feel wonderful – I know you haven’t got kids yet. But it really does knock your body confidence but today you made me forget my wibbly wobbly bits and there’s no way to really explain how marvellous that felt  x” <– it’s messages like this that make my job so worthwhile!

I decided to use a mixture of natural light and flash, because I wanted to get as much variety out of the shoot as possible in the time we had (after hair and make-up was done, we were all packed up and finished 2 hours later).

Here (below) Mrs S is wearing one of our red and black corsets (we have two!), which I found on e-bay for under £20. The necklace is also from the ‘Ginny Marsh Photography boudoir box’, bought from accessorise.

She brought a beautiful fur shrug that was for her wedding day, and this shirt belongs to Mrs S’s husband – she wanted to wear something of his that was simple yet sexy, and see if he’d notice! We wanted to do something quite fun as well as some of the more elegant portraits, and we just had a giggle trying out different poses!

Later that night I sent Mrs S a sneaky peak of one image that I’d retouched, because I couldn’t wait and loved it so much. This is the response I got:

“I’m blown away by the photograph Ginny it made me cry in a good way. You’re fab and I can’t wait to see his reaction…was not expecting to see anything for a few days either! What a lovely surprise, thank you… you have a real talent and eye for what works, so happy, can’t stop grinning  xxx”

Again, as I said earlier, it’s messages like this that make my job worthwhile!

I turned these images into a beautiful album with a wine red linen cover, and it was so difficult choosing the images to go into it – in the end Mrs S told me to just go for it and choose the images and design the album, because she couldn’t narrow it down. It arrived within good time for her to take with her and surprise her husband on their wedding day!

If you’re thinking about doing your own boudoir shoot, get in touch and I will answer any questions you may have. Also do check out my blog on ‘What to expect and what to wear‘ for useful info.

Thanks for reading 🙂 Ginny x