The holidays are right around the corner (hello November 1st tomorrow), which means it’s time to start thinking about and planning family photos. The past couple of years I waited until the last minute and we just took our photos for our holiday cards at home… which was fine. But this year I got it together early and am excited to send our cards out.

I wanted to share how I plan out our outfits for photos. Jeff completely trusts me and will usually wear what I pick out for him. Although, truth be told, his outfit is usually the most basic of the bunch. But I’ll get to that.

Step one: choose a color scheme.

Since we were shooting at the beach at magic hour I wanted to keep our outfits on the neutral side. I usually start by choosing mine or Crosby’s outfit and build from there. For this one I chose my Cleobella dress first. Then I picked this simple blush romper for Crosby, pulling from the blush in the flowers on my dress. Last I chose Jeff’s beige sweater and jeans. A super simple outfit I knew he’d wear and flows well with ours.

A tip, it always helps to pull everything out and take a quick pic to make sure all the colors, etc look good together.

A funny story about these shots… we started the shoot in the park above the beach and slowly made our way down. Once we got down to the sand Crosby was so excited all she wanted to do was run around. Our photographer took advantage of the happy toddler moment and was taking pictures of her running at the waters edge. All was good until a big wave came and knocked her down. She got soooo soaked. Luckily I brought a change of clothes but forgot a hair brush and her hair was wet. The rest of the shoot (this outfit) was mostly from far away so you couldn’t see how miserable she was.

Look #2:

For this look I knew I wanted Crosby to wear this Burberry dress. Her grandma got it before she was born and I’ve been waiting for her to fit into it. Next I picked my dress… I liked how the red ombre complimented Crosby’s dress. And again, last was Jeff’s look, neutral and tied the whole thing together.

Outfit details:

look #1:

My dress is Cleobella but old. Similar here and here

Crosby’s romper

Jeff’s sweater is old J. Crew – similar here, jeans

look #2:

My dress

Crosby’s dress

Jeff’s shirt and pants

Happy Halloween – thanks for reading and following!