Photo Thursdays- What to wear for family pictures

(I’m Back!! After days with no internet. I want to thank Lorene from Just Lu for helping me out for a few days!)
Here it is. My answer to the number one question I get asked. What should we wear for family pictures?
Most of the e-mails I get, often start with the phrase,” I am really sick of the jeans and white shirt look, what else can you recommend?” While the white shirt and jeans look will always be a classic family picture look, I agree, I wish we could move onto something a little more tailored to each family. Here are my favorite looks for family pictures.
#1. Matching to an accessory. None of these girl are wearing matching clothes but they have striped scarfs or hats and all of their clothes match those accessories. It is a clever way to give the picture a feeling of coordination without having to restrict the individual styles of each girl. While super cute, this works best for groups of girls, although I have seen it pulled off well with men involved, they just don’t wear the accessory and are dressed it a complimentary color.

#2 Wearing opposite shades of the same colors. Dress all the girls in tan (or any other color you have picked.) and all the men in dark brown. You can make them wearing matching shirts or let everyone express their own style as long as it is the right color. It is totally up to you how similar you want the people to look.

#3. Wearing the same color but not the same patterns. While I am the first to tell you that bold patterns are a don’t for family pictures, simple stripes can do a lot to add dimension to your photo. This family may all be in Navy, but the kids break up the block of navy with their white stripes. This look works best when you select a group to be solids and a group to be stripes (or any other small pattern). In this picture, parents are solids and kids stripes. The kids wearing blue and white striped shirts also open the door for some people to wear white without the picture looking weird.

#4. Wearing exactly the same shirts in different colors. Find shirts for your kids that are the same but made in a few different colors. Dress them each in a different color and then dress mom and dad in colors that work well with those shirts.

#5. Have an accent color. In this family, the parents are dressed in shades of blue but the baby is in red and therefor a nice accent to the picture. You can do this by dressing a family in a certain color, say black and then allowing an accent, such as letting the girls wear red camis under their shirts and giving the boys red ties. That way there is a little color without it making too big a splash. If there are very few children, or a newborn, then this is a great opportunity to dress them completely in the accent color like in the above photo.

#6. Different shades of the same color. Pick a color and then dress people in any shade of that color. It allows everyone to be different and show they style with an underlying theme.

#7. Different colors but same intensity. Let everyone dress in a different color but keep the shades to the same intensity. Let everyone wear a different pastel or as in the above photo, let people wear a bright but solid color shirt.

It is more acceptable than ever for people to wear different colors in photos. Green/yellow are a hot combination right now, as are orange/yellow. Just remember the more outrageous and bright your clothes are, the more people will just see the clothes in the photo and not the faces.