Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it just the parents and the bride? I don't see anything wrong with that.

If there are other issues though, this is a bad thing.

Leaving out the spouse from a "family" photo says "Spouse isn't really part of our family." At my wedding DH and I didn't want each other to not be in pics with our families, and if our siblings had been married then we wouldn't have excluded our spouse from the pictures either.

We did various combinations at our wedding. This seems very common and the photographer directs it. I think part of it is my own parents have few photos of all their kids together, so it was exciting to have one with parents and adult children including the bride. Same on the groom, there is something like 30 years of history for the parents so it was nice to see mother and son/groom and parents with their two sons. I didn't feel that took anything away from me. We had pictures with bride/groom and bride/groom and both sets of parents. Actually I feel the combination of photos is sort of an evolution of the relationship. It's an acknowledgment of the past (siblings with their parents) as well as the future with bride/groom and combination of their families. We took one of our grandmothers all together which is even more special since two of our grandmothers passed away within 2 years of the wedding. I don't understand why everyone needs to be in every photo. Wouldn't that just be a panoramic of the wedding?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouses are not blood relations. I don't see a problem with it.

And if they didn't know before that they were not family......now they do. It's ugly. Why bother have a wedding.

I'm the PP you answered, and yeah, I agree. Don't bother.

Anonymous wrote:Spouses are not blood relations. I don't see a problem with it.

And if they didn't know before that they were not family......now they do. It's ugly. Why bother have a wedding.

Spouses are not blood relations. I don't see a problem with it.

I'm glad I have some of my sister's photos of my parents and just her since the marriage didn't work out.

I am glad our wedding photographer insisted on the photo for our future children. It was DH and I and both sets of our parents and then one that included my grandmother who was the only living grandparent at the time. So, our children now have a photo that is part of their family tree. My grandmother and three of four of our parents are gone now and that photo has become more and more important.

Anonymous wrote:Why would someone take a "family photo" and exclude spouses?
I have even seen it done at a wedding. We recently went to a wedding where the brides parents took a "family photo" and excluded the groom.
You can't make this stuff up!

that's pretty common. why do people search for things to get angry about?

Anonymous wrote:Why would someone take a "family photo" and exclude spouses?
I have even seen it done at a wedding. We recently went to a wedding where the brides parents took a "family photo" and excluded the groom.
You can't make this stuff up!

I don't know why you think this is weird, OP, I've seen a ton of wedding photos and there is often one like this of the bride and her family and the groom and his family.

This is totally normal to me. Me and my two siblings only, my husband and his sister only, me and my parents only, my husband and his parents only, me and my entire family only, my husband and his entire family only, etc. You get the idea. We just get pics with all kinds of different family combinations because it's a once in a life time experience and we'd want that.

It should have told me everything I needed to know, that there was not one single photo of my groom with my parents. God, they hated that man. They certainly loved me though, and I can see it in all the pictures we took that day.

They are gone now. Both of them. Well, all of them. My parents died and the marriage only lasted a year.

Anonymous wrote:Why would someone take a "family photo" and exclude spouses?
I have even seen it done at a wedding. We recently went to a wedding where the brides parents took a "family photo" and excluded the groom.
You can't make this stuff up!

Because it's not a "family" photo. It's a "sibling" photo. What's the big deal? I have no problem stepping back to let DH's family do that. I don't want all formal pictures of my kids to have my nieces and nephews too. I love them and some group photos are good but my kids are the only ones I'm raising and sometimes I want just them.

What if you have a really big family? We always do a photo with the spouses (and now their kids, because of course they're part of the family too), but there are so many people (dozens!) that you can't see anyone -- everyone's like a tiny dot in the photo. So we do try to occasionally do one with just the siblings. People should be less sensitive, really. And isn't it nice to have one that you can put side-to-side with that crazy photo from 1976 to compare how everyone has changed?
Also, honestly, the divorce thing makes it tough. We have a bunch of lovely family photos from the '80s and early '90s that we can't use anymore because some one's crazy ex-spouse is in the photo and their new spouse gets irked about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it just the parents and the bride? I don't see anything wrong with that.

If there are other issues though, this is a bad thing.

Leaving out the spouse from a "family" photo says "Spouse isn't really part of our family." At my wedding DH and I didn't want each other to not be in pics with our families, and if our siblings had been married then we wouldn't have excluded our spouse from the pictures either.

I would agree with that if it was the only family photo, but if you have a photo of the bride and her parents, and the groom and his parents, and the bride and groom with both their parents, etc., then I don't think it sends any message at all.

We had about 50 family photos taken. About 20 of them didn't include spouse. We just did what photographer wanted since we had some time to kill before the reception. They are in the photo album our photographer gave us (as well as on the disc of all the photos) otherwise they aren't displayed anywhere. My parents have a picture of our family and DH. His family has a picture of them, us, his sister her fiancé and her son, all in the picture.

No big deal

I see nothing wrong with that... my sister did a picture like that for her wedding. Just my parents, me and her, without my DH or kids. It's nice to get a picture of the nuclear family. It was once only us, and we are still close.

Then we got PLENTY with DH and the kids and everyone. No one was left out!