Where to Shop | Family Photos

‘Tis the season for family photos! It seems like each year it gets earlier and earlier that we start preparing and planning for family photos, so some of you who are on the ball have already taken your photos. It’s such a fun time of year to give and receive holiday cards all while seeing how cute your friend’s families are. If you’re not careful, the cost of these cards can really add up! There’s postage, printing, photographer fees, hair, makeup, and the most important thing of all is attire!

Last year, Aaron and I did a fun photo shoot with Parker Micheals Photography (@parkermicheaelsphotography on Instagram) and I of course waited until the last minute to look for my outfits. Aaron did the same thing! I suggested a couple outfits to him and he also waited until the day before the photo shoot to go shopping. Even my sister-in-law started shopping early and found a great dress less than 24 hours from a store you probably won’t consider.

If money is not a worry and you are more worried about coordinating everyone’s outfits together, then you should probably stop reading this and call Nordstrom to hire a personal shopper, seriously! One of my girlfriends has had such great success with Nordstrom personal shoppers that she won’t have it any other way for family photos. The personal shopper is able to go to the kids department, baby section, mens and women’s to find outfits that don’t match perfectly, but definitely look good when they’re all together. Or, you can always contact me to do the shopping for you! I have the ability to shop outside of just one store and to be able to provide options.

For everyone else who is willing to take on the challenge… have you considered second hand clothing stores? Hear me out… typically the “family photo outfit” is not something that is worn many times other than that one photo. Why pay full price on something you or the kids are only going to wear once? For this photo shoot I ended up going to Uptown Cheapskate in Chandler during my lunch break and finding not only this floral Forever 21 dress ($14.99), but another dress that I changed into for the second look ($15.99) and two Free People tops ($6.74 and $14.99) all for under $50 with a $5 off coupon. Now that it’s been a full year, I’ve actually worn the floral dress many times and I’ve already sold the second dress back to Uptown Cheapskate because it wasn’t practical for me to wear multiple times.

For Aaron, he had a $50 TJ Maxx gift card from his mom that was collecting dust. Similar situation as me, he didn’t want to spend a fortune on clothes he would never wear again. However, he was blown away by the TJ Maxx in Old Town Scottsdale. He found a denim button down from Joe’s Jeans ($39.99) and pair that with black denim from 7’s For All Mankind. He also found a white button down ($12.99) and slacks ($19.99) for the second look (photos to come) that was nice enough for the photos, but not too nice that we couldn’t go swimming in the lake in them. His gift card was also for $50 and ended up spending about $28 over that amount.

As for my sister-in-law, she ended up getting a dress from Windsor. It was relatively inexpensive, looked great in photos and she doesn’t really care if she wears it again. She also found dresses from Amazon. A couple of the places I thought she’d find something at, but didn’t was Lulu’s, Revolve and Tobi. It took too long for her to get those items in the mail. Plus, she wanted her photos to be light and airy and finding a light colored dress in October was almost impossible, so make sure to think ahead to the look that you’re going for and how the season will impact your fashion choices. Happy Family Photo Season!