From day one as a wedding photographer, I’ve loved seeing and photographing my couples’ decor and little touches. But for years, I felt wrong.
You don’t have to scroll Instagram for very long before you see photographers claiming ‘Weddings are about people, details don’t matter.” And the non-wedding world seems to relish criticising the visual side of a wedding just as much – if not more.
So for years, I captured details but rarely shared them. And I just held onto a private belief that they were all missing the point: that it’s what details represent that matters.
But quiet no more!
My latest Substack essay ‘We can’t ignore the napkins’ is ready to read. Fair warning: You’ll need a cuppa! Because what started as “This’ll be a nice, short breather after my first Substack essay, somehow ended up at 2500 words! Turns out wedding details wanted their say!
When I sat down to really think about it, I found a deeper reverence for wedding details than I expected.
It turns out details are about people. Because they’re stories and meaning in a tangible, visible form.
“Dried petals are… dried petals. But to the couple, they hold their parents’ excitement to tend roses, carefully pick them, and give up every available surface for weeks to dry them for confetti, which felt like a shower of love on the day.
The essay explores why details matter through four overlapping purposes – feeling, story, beauty, and ritual. And it makes the case that “intention can turn a ‘thing’ into a meaningful thing”.
It also digs into how details have become convenient scapegoats for cultural problems like consumerism and social media comparison, how the spiritual/material binary is false, and how dismissing details dismisses something deeply human.
What started as a defence of details became an exploration of the role beauty plays in a meaningful wedding day.
Do you feel details get unfairly criticised – or have you felt judged for caring about them? Read the essay and tell me your take.
