It has been a nice minute since we've had family photos. I'm usually really good with taking yearly photos of the kids to mark milestones like birthdays, first day of school, etc. and I've had family photos on my radar for about 2 years now and every holiday season I make a mental note of "We gotta take pictures" and then it's New Years. Though we can take them anytime, I wanted to take some this year and send out cards to Family and Friends, eventually. Thus one day very randomly I decided this year, this fall, we are taking family photos, which gave me about 3 weeks, to plan and execute 😉. So for a family of 5 this was a challenging feat to get 4 other people coordinated and myself.
To help keep myself organized, I followed these steps.
1. Choose color scheme and check closet for any pieces that could be used
To start, I first thought of what was in our closets. I think this is the best route in that it not only saves money, but the time it takes to search for pieces that compliment each other so that everyone will look like we are supposed to be in a picture together. This year I wanted to go with navy as a base color. Unfortunately none of us had anything remotely close to navy for the fall hanging in our closets already so I started browsing the internet.
2. Pick a family member to be the base
I am an avid online shopper and I love off-price stores such as Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and the list goes on. I googled navy fall dresses, and Kohls popped up and thus had my attention. I usually pick a family member to start with, either myself, a kid, or the hubby, it's usually random. For example, let's say Kingston had a navy shirt he could wear, he would be my base on how I would coordinate everyone around him. This year, Kyla was the lucky one, I browsed juniors dresses and came across the perfect dress, after getting her approval, I happily put in my discount code for an additional 30% off and ordered her dress here.
3. Outfits should fit personalities
Next was Kingston in no specific order. I love dressing my big boy, after having two girls, its fun dressing him up and he loves to be fly. I wanted him to be casual and not be in a suit or anything and wanted his outfit to fit his personality. For Kingston, I don't like spending much on his clothes because he is growing so fast and my budget was under $50 per kid, so I headed to children's place online, found khaki chino pants, they were sold out of the denim shirt I wanted, so I headed to Target and found a navy plaid shirt that worked fine.
4. Revisit if there is something in the closet that can be used after getting a couple of outfits
Since I now had 2/3 kids ready, I then started looking for the my last kid, Kaitlyn. At this time, since there are some completed outfits, I revisited step 1, if there was something hanging in the closet that could be used. To my delight, Kaitlyn had a corduroy jumper but needed a top. I came across Joyfolie, the sweetest online boutique, where I found the perfect dress for me and top for Kaitlyn. When I tell you this site has me head over heals! I absolutely love their style of clothing and shipping was very fast in that they are located here in Texas. When I received the clothes there were very well packaged and the quality I expected. I have been wanting to order from them for the longest and am glad I did, at the time they had 30% off there site for their Fall collection and are currently running a similar promotion for their spring line.
So to revisit, I had first: pick a color, check your closet and create a budget; second: pick a family member to be your base outfit; third: pick outfits that fit the individual personalities; fourth: complete outfits and five: iron out the details.
So now that I had everyone's outfit...well let's step back, OT. He was adamant to dress himself this go round, so he went to Burlington and found his shirt to match the color scheme. He did send photos and facetimed, so this helped in making sure it matched.
5. Ironing out the details. The details begin with shoes, hair styles, accessories etc.
I usually make a list and make a section for each family member and go down the list. . But with short for time, the girls hair was in braids and the guys had cuts. I did a quick twist out on my natural and was happy with it.
I was able to use shoes Kaitlyn could still fit, boots OT and I had in our closet, and surprisingly, Kyla was okay with wearing a pair of my boots she could fit, so Kingston was the only one I bought shoes for and I got those from Amazon.
Below is our Fall 2020 family photo and I must say I am most proud of them in that I was able to pull it off! Please share any experiences or great ideas you have of your own!
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