Photographer: Christie Mumm
Colorful Clients
Christie Mumm limits her wedding bookings to about a dozen a year, allowing her to choose clients with whom she feels a real connection. These brides are quite the opposite of the stressed-out, control-freak women reality television has coined “bridezillas.” In fact, Christie and her staff joke that they work with “bridechillas”—women who are relaxed, fun, secure, and not at all high-maintenance. For the most part, she says, “Our brides are family-minded professionals with their careers in order. They’ll usually be having kids in two to three years, so we’ll have them coming back for those image and hopefully be part of their lives long-term. I want to work with people who love life, love each other, and who value art and photography. My clients aren’t looking for the cheapest photographer.” As you can see in the accompanying images, they’re also brides with a developed sense of personal style that shines through in Christie’s images.
“Color in weddings is a trend over the last few years,” says Christie, “and it comes along with the kinds of brides we tend to work with.”
For some couples, color is woven into the wedding story through props like the red car and inventive bouquet (look closely for the drawer pulls the florist integrated) shown on the facing page. As seen in the beach image, natural color can also play a role. A vibrant sunset image was one of the couple’s requests. While there were no clouds that day, Christie was able to incorporate smoke plumes from a distant wildfire to add texture in the sky. Bumping up the color a little in postproduction gave the couple the look they wanted—and let Christie make something good out of something bad.
Body art is another colorful way many of Christie’s brides show their personalities (right). “I love tattoos and one of my sisters-in-law owns a tattoo parlor,” she says. “If the bride has a lot of well-thought-out body art, she usually wants to show it.” Christie has a lot of brides who love pinup-style clothing and hair, so this is a style she loves shooting.
“Body art is another colorful way many of Christie’s brides show their personalities.”
