How to Dress in Coordinating Outfits for Family Pictures
A lot of families choose to celebrate the end of the year, or the start of the new year, with professional family pictures. It’s always fun to see how everyone has grown and changed. Get them done in enough time and you can add them to your Christmas cards! But dressing the whole family can seem daunting, especially if you have a bunch of different ages, heights and genders. Here are my tips on How to dress in Coordinating outfits for family pictures
Keep it Neutral
This isn’t so much “holiday” style, more just coordinating outfits in general, but it could be carried into the holiday season as well. The color palette for this look is light, neutral colors like white, tan, oatmeal and light pink. My husband describes this look as “boring”. He thinks it washes us out, but personally I love this style because it reminds me of a simpler time. It’s a very organic, light and flowy style. If you’re doing it for the holidays, you could do camel, black and/or white, any variation of that. Keep everyone matching head to toe or mix it up!
Photo by: Leah Elizabeth Photography, Columbia, SC
Plaid Patterns
Plaid is nothing new for the holiday season. There are so many different ways you can style the whole family with plaid. You can do a buffalo check (red and black or white and black). Those are classic colors and styles that will last you from fall to winter. Plus, you can wear them outside of the holiday season. You could also go for traditional tartan plaid prints. After visiting Scotland I love tartan! You can find them pretty affordable at places like Old Navy, Gap and Target, especially when there are lots of sales going on! Get everyone the same shirt, just in different sizes. Or have all the girls wear one color plaid and the guys wear another coordinating color. Denim or neutral bottoms work best since the prints are usually pretty loud.
Matching Family Pajamas
You can follow our lead and take lifestyle photos in your home wearing comfy pjs, either by yourself or from a professional. Lifestyle photography is really in right now and adds a more real/homey vibe to your images. There are several stores that have matching pajamas for the whole family. But sometimes the sizing can be off and not everybody can end up in the same prints. If you have a large family or want to get matching PJs for a bunch of people, you might have to mix-and-match patterns, just make sure they all coordinate together. Otherwise if you have a smaller family unit, like we do, I was able to get the kids the same onesie, just different sizes and my husband and I matching fleece pants and thermal long sleeve shirts.
I got our set from Old Navy, during their Black Friday sale, so everything was 50% off! I chose the polar bear print because it was boyish for the men in our family, but not too manly that the girls couldn’t pull it off. My son always gets confused for a girl, so I was definitely not putting him in anything remotely girlie!
Fancy Family
My final recommendation for family pictures during the holidays would to be to go classy and fancy. Have dad wear a suit and little guys wear a suit if they have one. My son does not, so he just wears his “nicest outfit” that goes with the rest of us. I am wearing a patterned dress that coordinates with my husband’s suit and our daughter has a plain dress on that compliments one color from my pattern.
The key is to pick one person that you’re going to base the whole entire look off of. For us, that’s usually me or my daughter, since we have the cutest/most fun clothes. The men can coordinate around colors that are already in your chosen piece. Or they can always go super neutral since they’re men and choices are limited.
If you have someone wearing a bold print/pattern, pick single basic colors from that piece to coordinate with. But if you really want everyone to look the same, you could get the same exact top/dress just in different sizes. I would recommend starting at places like Old Navy that are already really affordable and cater to matching family outfits. They even have a section on their website dedicated to matching family styles, including minis. So they are in the game and making it really easy.
Hope y’all found these tips helpful! I find myself trying to coordinate matching family outfits for Thanksgiving, Christmas, church sometimes and of course whenever we get professional pictures taken. I’ve done it at least seven times already this season! Hope this is a helpful guide for your families next photo session!!
