First and foremost - dress for comfort!

You know yourself, your kids and your spouse better than anyone!  Style yourselves in clothing that is comfortable.  You want to be free to move and engage with one another during our session.  We don't want you to feel trapped in clothing you aren't comfortable in. If your husband prefers loose t-shirts to a button-down or sweater, find a coordinating solid long-sleeved tee that he won't mind wearing for an hour or so. Someone prefers sneakers to dress shoes?  That's okay!  Converse and Vans and a few other brands make shoes that are easy to color-coordinate into your palette.

Second, dress to coordinate, not match 100%.  

Find a key piece of clothing to start with, maybe even a patterned shirt - in this case, I found Dad's shirt first and built the wardrobe around the navy, hunter green and rust colors that are woven throughout the modern plaid pattern.  This shirt can easily be dressed up or down to suit the man in your life's preference - khakis or dark blue jeans, sneakers or nice dress shoes - whatever makes it work for him to be relaxed in what he is wearing.

Using the inspiration from dad's shirt, I knew I wanted mom to be in the dark green color that was just an accent in the dad's shirt so that when I put them together later for couples portraits not including their entire family, they coordinate well and compliment one another.

I used the same logic when preparing for the boys clothing.  In this instance, I am styling for two teenage guys and a school-age little boy.  When photographing the boys separately (together as a group), we would like for their outfits to add a little depth to the image without appearing to perfectly match. If we take the outfits apart and also look at just dad with each boy and just mom with each boy's outfit, they coordinate well but there's enough separation in knits and color to add dimension.

Finally, don't get stuck in a box!

If you feel overwhelmed, go back to your inspiration piece. Pulling together outfits can be daunting, time consuming and of course, expensive if you're not careful.  I encourage you to look into your own closets before running out to buy brand new outfits and shoes for each family member.  Not every piece has to be brand new!  Often, most families only have to grab a few articles of clothing to pull together their families outfits.  Usually with boys, it means pants that don't have holes in the knees and shoes that don't squish their ever growing feet. Having raised two teenage boys myself, I understand this dilemma so well!

And of course, if you're a client, give me a call!  Take pictures of the outfits you plan to use and send them to me to have a look at and I'll give you my opinion on what works and what may not.  If you need to go shopping and you'd like for me to join you - just say the word and we'll set a date to make it happen!

In case anyone is curious where the pieces of clothing in this particular inspiration board came from, I did all my searching online and found items from Kohls, Amazon, The Children's Place and Rack Room Shoes and I will link each outfit below so you can explore them for yourself.

Happy outfit building, whether it's through shopping or digging through closets to pull it all together - you've got this!!