Best Milwaukee Wedding Photographer for Timeless Photos

A full review of our experience working with The Paper Elephant, a Top Milwaukee Wedding Photographer for modern, romantic & timeless photos.

This one’s for all my newly engaged Wisconsin brides looking for their dream wedding photographer. If the words classic, timeless, modern, romantic, or editorial describe the aesthetic you want for your wedding day, keep reading!

This blog post will share a glimpse inside our unique 3-day Indian Fusion wedding, a full review of our experience working with The Paper Elephant, and a few valuable tips for any future brides on selecting the perfect photographer.

Milwaukee Wedding Photographer: The Paper Elephant

Choosing The Paper Elephant as our wedding photographer, was one of the best decisions we made for our wedding. My husband, Vilas, and I talk about this almost every day. We could not have chosen a better photographer to capture all the special moments of our wedding!

It’s been a little over a month since our wedding weekend and we just got all of the photos back and they are better than I could’ve ever imagined. Absolutely incredible in every way. I look through them every night before I fall asleep, just reminiscing on our magical weekend. I wish we could re-live it!

Since we had such a phenomenal experience working with Tegan and her husband from The Paper Elephant, I wanted to share more about it on here!

Why We Chose The Paper Elephant

The Paper Elephant photographed my brother’s winter wedding the year prior and I FELL IN LOVE with the photos.

Timeless Photography Style

The getting ready shots, the family portraits, all the detail photos.. everything was so amazing and I knew this was the same photography style we wanted for our wedding. Very clean, classic, and timeless.

Efficient & Smooth Experience

At my brother’s wedding, we witnessed firsthand how quickly and efficiently Tegan and her husband organized each shot. Group photos can be extremely time-consuming due to the large number of people involved, but Tegan made everything go so smoothly! We were amazed at how fast she captured all the requested shots.

Posing Guidance

Not only that, but she made the bridal party feel very comfortable in front of the camera by offering guidance on how to pose, when to smile, and where to look for the photos. Everything just felt very natural.

High-Quality Storytelling Photography

Before booking, my husband and I also thoroughly reviewed Tegan’s portfolio and her experience photographing other multicultural weddings. We were so impressed by her ability to capture high-quality, storytelling photos that made us feel as if we were there. I don’t know how she does it, but she has a way of elevating every single photograph! Her work is just absolutely amazing.

What to Expect from The Paper Elephant

I’ll walk you through a few of the things you can expect when booking The Paper Elephant as your wedding photographer. I should mention that before we signed the contract, we set up a virtual meeting with Tegan to go over our wedding vision, budget, and other questions we had.

Milwaukee Wedding Photographer: The Paper Elephant

This was extremely helpful, especially in the beginning stage of wedding planning. I highly recommend sitting down with your preferred photographer to discuss all your wedding details.

Customization and Consultation

Since our wedding was a little bit unique (a Hindu and Christian wedding spanning multiple days), it was really helpful to get Tegan’s opinion on photography coverage and the wedding day timeline. Tegan was able to put together a customized package for us based on our photography needs and help us brainstorm ways to make our wedding vision come to life.

Genuine and Honest Approach

What I loved about Tegan after meeting with her was that she was very honest, genuine, and easy to talk to. She worked with us to find a custom package that fit within our budget and that allowed us photography coverage for two days.

Tegan didn’t try to sell us on her most expensive package or convince us we needed more photography hours. She listened to what we wanted and needed and then helped us find something that would work.

A Photographer Who Really Cares

Throughout our planning process, we spoke with numerous wedding industry vendors, many of whom came across as overly sales-driven (in my opinion). As soon as we mentioned we were having an Indian wedding, they’d immediately push their most expensive and elaborate package on us, without asking for specifics on our wants/needs. It was kind of frustrating.

Tegan was completely different! From the moment we met with her, we knew she had our best interests at heart. You could tell that she genuinely cared about getting to know us, our love story, and our wedding day vision.

Professionalism and Responsiveness

Tegan was always prompt in responding to our emails, texts, and calls. She’d update us to let us know if she’d be out of town or was taking time off with her family so that we knew she’d be away from her laptop.

She was always on time for our meetings and photo sessions, and she always responded in a friendly, professional manner. This made our planning process so smooth and stress-free!

The Paper Elephant Wedding Checklist:

After our initial meeting and signing the wedding agreement, here were a few of the checklist items we completed!

Get to Know You questionnaire
Engagement Photo Session – I’ll talk more about this in the next section
Planning your wedding day timeline
Wedding Details questionnaire
Final Planning Meeting

Overall, we had such a seamless experience working with The Paper Elephant. I truly cannot say enough good things!

Our Engagement Session

With our photography package, we received a three-hour engagement session that we decided to break up into two 1.5-hour sessions. These were SO much fun. My husband and I had never had professional photos taken of us before, so we didn’t know what to expect. But, Tegan made the entire process seamless.

Starting with the Get to Know You questionnaire, my husband and I filled it out and described our vision for our engagement photos. We wanted modern, elevated, classy, but fun! Based off of our answers and the vision we were going for, Tegan was able to recommend photo locations in the Milwaukee area that she thought fit the vibe.

First Engagement Session

For our first session, we went with Lake Park, Milwaukee. We loved that it had a mix of natural greenery, some architecture and provided us with a lot of different backdrops.

We chose to dress up a bit since we were using this first session to get photos for our Save The Dates. I wore two different formal white dresses that I absolutely loved. I’ll share a few of my favorite photos from our session below.

Vilas and I were worried that we wouldn’t know how to pose for the photos or that we’d look awkward since we had never taken photos like this before. But, Tegan made us feel like the camera wasn’t even there. She directed us on poses, how to tilt our heads, and let us know when we should walk, look back, or kiss.

Having her help direct each shot allowed Vilas and me to fully enjoy our session without worrying about whether were posing correctly. By the end of the night, we were so sad that our session was over. We had so much fun, we wanted to keep taking photos!

In the coming weeks, I plan on writing a dedicated blog post sharing more of the photos from our online gallery and giving you a few tips to help you prepare for your own engagement pictures.

I won’t share too much more in this post, but we really couldn’t be more thankful to have Tegan as our photographer. She did such an amazing job capturing a mix of posed and candid shots of us. I even wanted a blurry, vintage-style black-and-white photo from our session and Tegan definitely delivered!

Second Engagement Session

Since our first engagement session was pretty formal, we wanted our second session to be a bit more casual and laid back. We decided to do a winter photoshoot in Whitnall Park and include our two-year-old golden retriever, Elsa!

There were only two big snowstorms this year in Wisconsin, so these photos were taken in the middle of March, early Saturday morning. By the afternoon, all of this snow had already melted!

Tegan knew we wanted a snowy photoshoot, so she watched the weather closely and timed our photos perfectly! She even arrived at Whitnall Park early to scope out a few awesome locations for us too. She knew we wanted lots of greenery (no brown trees haha)!

Special Moments from our Christian Ceremony & Reception

Saturday, May 25th was the absolute perfect day – sunny, minimal wind, and temps in the mid 70’s. We couldn’t have asked for better weather for our fairytale wedding!

First Look & Private Vows

Here are a few intimate moments between my husband and me. It makes me smile every time I look through these photos! Tegan’s ability to capture all the real emotions that we felt during this day is absolutely incredible.

During our first look, my husband and I read our vows together privately. This was 100% my favorite thing about our entire wedding weekend! It was such a special and intimate moment between the two of us.

Bride Portraits

I’m OBSESSED with my bridal portraits! These make me want to put on my wedding dress again and have another photoshoot.

Family Photos

We wanted a good variety of indoor and outdoor group photos. So, right after our Christian ceremony, we took a few photos underneath our floral arch that our insanely talented florist, Milwaukee Flower Company, put together for us. Then we headed outside for the rest of the group photos!

Milwaukee Wedding Photographer: The Paper Elephant

Reception

I’m kind of going out of order here because our reception was the very last event of the weekend, but here are a few photos from Sunday evening. I wore a strapless glitter wedding dress from Miss Ruby and had all the bridesmaids back in their pink satin dresses.

We have so many more amazing photos from our reception, but I know this post is getting lengthy, so I won’t share too many more. I just wanted to give you an idea of Tegan’s indoor photography at our reception. I love that the photos are true to color, vibrant, and crystal clear.

Capturing our Hindu Ceremony

Tegan has previously photographed other Hindu/Christian weddings, so she’s familiar with the customs and rituals of a Hindu ceremony. This was really important to us when finding a professional wedding photographer!

We wanted someone who had experience with multicultural weddings because there’s SO much that goes into them. Since Tegan had photographed other Hindu weddings, she was able to help us map out our photography timeline for all the different events and provide us with suggestions that would help make the day of our wedding run smoothly.

Milwaukee Wedding Photographer: The Paper Elephant

Sadly, the weather didn’t cooperate with us for our outdoor ceremony and it rained the entire time. However, we didn’t let that ruin our day! To be honest, I feel like it made our wedding even more special and memorable.

Seeing all our friends and family standing by our side, holding umbrellas and using blankets to shield us from the wind, is something I’ll never forget.

Tegan captured so many beautiful moments from the ceremony. The shared love everyone had for Vilas and I was so clearly visible in all of the photos!

Why We Recommend The Paper Elephant

Having worked with Tegan and her husband for the past year and a half through our engagement sessions and our wedding day, here’s why we consider The Paper Elephant to be a top Milwaukee wedding photographer.

Milwaukee Wedding Photographer: The Paper Elephant

Exceptional photography skills – her skills and creativity are truly unmatched. Tegan has such an eye for detail.
Professional and high quality work
Timeless and modern editing style
Personal Connection – she made us feel so comfortable and we had so much fun taking photos!
Clear communication
Flexible and adaptable – great at handling unexpected events and changes
Local Milwaukee knowledge – Tegan knows so many awesome Milwaukee (and surrounding areas) photoshoot locations!

A few Tips for Future Couples

Here are a few pieces of advice for anyone getting married soon!

Define your photography style

This might be the most important piece of advice! Every photographer has a slightly different style. Get clear on the style of wedding photos you like and then compare full wedding galleries from potential photographers.

Book your photographer early!

I know this could be said about any wedding vendor because it seems like everyone books up so fast. But, if photography is ranked high on your wedding priority list, make sure you book as soon as you can. We booked The Paper Elephant about a year and a half before our big day.

Set your budget based on how high you rank photography on your wedding priority list.

For my husband and I, photography was our number one priority. We were willing to spend more on this because we wanted our wedding pictures to be absolutely PERFECT.

Communicate your vision & must-have shots.

Make your wedding day vision super clear for your photographer. If you want guidance on posing, say that. If you want to prioritize family photos, tell them. Prefer outdoor photos over indoor? Then say that too. The more you communicate with your photographer about your hopes and goals, the happier you’ll be with the outcome!

Create a Pinterest board of photography shots that you like

The Paper Elephant did a great job utilizing the Pinterest board I made to ensure she captured all our must-have shots.

I hope you loved getting an inside look at our wedding weekend! Working with The Paper Elephant was an absolute dream and Tegan exceeded our expectations in every way possible.

I have more wedding posts planned, so check back here often to see what’s new. If you have any wedding blog post requests or questions on our wedding just let me know. For more of our wedding photos, check out my social media!

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Best Milwaukee Wedding Photographer for Timeless & Romantic Photos