Two Grooms Getting Ready: Photo Ideas Beyond Tradition

Most getting-ready photography is built around a bride and her bridesmaids in matching robes, soft window light, and a long mirror. When I photograph two grooms, that template simply doesn't fit — and honestly, that's where the most interesting pictures come from. After years shooting weddings across Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, I've learnt that two grooms getting ready photos work best when we throw out the script and build the morning around who you actually are.

Decide whether you're getting ready together or apart

This is the first conversation I have with every couple, because it shapes the entire morning. Some grooms want the classic separation — two rooms, two stories, a reveal saved for the aisle. Others have shared a home for a decade and find the idea of hiding from each other faintly ridiculous. Neither is wrong, but they produce completely different photographs.

If you split up, I'll usually arrange a second shooter or stagger my time so both rooms are properly covered. If you prep together, we lean into it: cufflinks fastened for one another, a shared mirror, the quiet teamwork of two people who've done this kind of thing a thousand times. That intimacy is far more compelling than any staged solo shot, and it's uniquely yours.

Build the room around real objects, not props

The bride-getting-ready aesthetic relies on a lot of pretty clutter — perfume bottles, silk hangers, ribbon-tied invitations. With grooms I see photographers panic and reach for whisky tumblers and pocket watches as substitutes. You don't need them. The strongest details are the ones that mean something: the watch your grandad left you, the boots you broke in over three Norfolk coast walks, the playlist on the speaker that's been your shared soundtrack for years.

Before the day, I ask both grooms to set aside three or four objects with genuine stories attached. We photograph those properly — close, deliberate, in good light by the window — rather than scattering generic styling across a bed. The result reads as your wedding, not a stock-image idea of what a wedding should look like.

Fresh prep-shot ideas worth stealing

Here are the moments I actively look for with two grooms — the ones that consistently outperform the posed mirror shot. Think of these as a menu rather than a checklist; we'll choose what feels natural to you both.

• ◆The mutual fix: One groom straightening the other's collar or tie. It's tender, slightly funny, and completely unposed once they forget I'm there.
• ◆First look in the doorway: If you're dressing apart, a corridor first look at a venue like a converted Suffolk barn gives a private, emotional beat before the ceremony crowd.
• ◆The lads' room: Brothers, best mates and dads piling into one room is loud and joyful. I shoot wide to catch the chaos, then close for the quiet glances.
• ◆Shoes and socks: Matching, mismatched or deliberately loud socks have become a signature for many grooms. Photograph them together, mid-laugh, not lined up on a windowsill.
• ◆The shared mirror: Both grooms reflected while adjusting jackets side by side — symmetry that quietly says partnership without a single cliche.
• ◆The exhale: That last still moment before walking out. I hang back and let it happen; it's usually the frame couples cry over later.

Light and location matter more than you think

English mornings are not generous with light. A grey Cambridgeshire sky in autumn can leave a hotel room feeling flat and dim by ten o'clock, so when I scout a venue I'm hunting for the largest window in the cleanest space. If your getting-ready room is small or cluttered — and many older venues across the region are — we'll relocate the key moments to a brighter corner, a landing, or even the garden if the weather holds.

I always ask couples to keep the prep room reasonably tidy and to draw back heavy curtains before I arrive. It sounds dull, but a clear surface and soft daylight do more for your photographs than any amount of styling. If you're marrying in a barn or marquee in rural Suffolk, factor in that the dressing space might be a side room with one small window — we plan around that early.

Let go of the heteronormative timeline

So much wedding advice assumes one partner is "the one who gets ready" and the other simply turns up. Two grooms get to rewrite that entirely. Maybe you both want a full morning documented. Maybe one of you wants twenty relaxed minutes and the other wants the whole barbers-then-buttonhole ritual. We design the schedule around your actual preferences rather than a borrowed structure.

My job is to notice what's genuinely happening between you and photograph it honestly. The couples I work with in and around Cambridge tend to relax the moment they realise I'm not going to force them into poses lifted from a different kind of wedding. When the morning is yours, the pictures finally look like you.