For a wedding to be perfect, few things are more important than the photos taken on the couple’s special day. It becomes necessary to capture those emotions at the perfect location during those key times that cannot be recreated.

While beautiful scenic locations and nature-packed parks were once considered a must in every wedding picture backdrop, new architectural buildings and fast-changing trends have altered the mindsets of many newlywed couples across Calgary. This week, The Weal has scoured the city in search of the new ‘it’ spots for wedding photos.

Samantha Yeung, a certified wedding planner at Kalista Weddings Inc., said that in today’s wedding photos require a blend of both city and nature as backdrops. With the increase in both general and rush hour traffic over the past few years, couples find it more convenient to have their wedding photo shoots taken at places within the area that they live in order to save time. Because of this, accessible places like Stephen Avenue, Inglewood, and select downtown office buildings have been the new “it” locations for a lot of newlyweds’ pictures. According to Yeung, these locales give wedding pictures more of a “fashion magazine look”.

“Office buildings seem to be one of the new hotspots downtown just because they’re different and not the typical nature and landscape that most couples would usually go for,” Yeung said.
In fact, these office buildings are known to have become so common that they’re actually beginning to charge a fee in order to grant photographers and their clients with a permit to shoot within the office premises.

Aside from the regular architecture-rich monuments and buildings in the city, another surprising and recent hotspot being chosen by many couples is SAIT and its parkades.

Wedding photographer Anna Michalska conducted a wedding photoshoot outside the Stan Grad Centre at SAIT in 2009, which she said was a perfect location because of its, “theatrical look and feel.”
“The look itself is so unique and uncommon,” Michalska said. “It suited the couple perfectly, because they, themselves, were so theatrical.”

As for SAIT’s parkades, wedding photographer Abigail Taylor said that it hasn’t been an uncommon location for wedding pictures because of its interesting concrete textures, extreme lighting and architectural lines. The lighting, which usually shines through beams, she said, helps to add a more dramatic look to her pictures.

“At the SAIT parkade, there’s always a slit or flash of light coming in through one side of the wall, and that does wonders in terms of dramatic lighting for the picture,” she said.

According to Taylor, some other well-known hotspots are the Lougheed House, because of its very historic architecture, and The Ranche Restaurant because of its rustic look, beautiful scenery and old country atmosphere.