Get your colorful wedding inspiration from this styled shoot at the Lucky Strike Suite in Durham, NC

First a disclaimer: this is a styled shoot. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, it means it’s not a real wedding. I think that’s important to disclaim, because a lot of times real couples don’t realize that the images they’re seeing on wedding blogs and in magazines don’t come from real weddings. The flexibility and timeline of a styled shoot means that we vendors, photographers especially, have time to do things that may not be possible on a real wedding day (unless the couple really wants to make them a priority). Styled shoots also involve teams of vendors doing their job for free, whether it’s to make connections with one another, get some exposure, or simply to have a creative outlet. So keep that in mind when you’re looking at wedding inspiration images. If you actually total up what a lot of styled shoots would cost when brought to life at a real wedding, you’d probably be in the >$40k budget range. End disclaimer.

This styled shoot was the result of me telling the ladies at Lucky Strike Suite (a new venue in Golden Belt with the Cotton Room and Belt Line Station) and Emily Katherine Events that I wanted to photograph something really colorful. From colorful, we added geometric, and as we added each new vendor to the team, the ideas grew.

Now, here’s the incredible team that came together to pull it off:

And finally, here’s that colorful wedding inspiration I promised: