KT Merry on 20 Years of Shooting Weddings Like Editorials

In 2009, KT Merry drove to the Florida Keys with a film camera, a stylist, and a hair and makeup artist she had called in as favors. There was no client, no budget, and no guarantee anyone would ever see the pictures. She shot the whole thing as a test, a Bali-inspired wedding concept built entirely on spec, because after five years assisting fashion photographers on catalog work that could be forgotten within a week, she wanted to make something with a longer shelf life.

Style Me Pretty published the shoot. It was one of the first wedding editorials the site had ever run, and it became the opening chapter of a career that has since taken Merry across six continents, onto the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and up the side of Mount Kilimanjaro with a couple who had just left their own wedding. She describes her own work simply: luxury destination weddings, editorials, beautiful places, and, when the booking allows for it, wildlife.

Next year marks 20 years since Merry incorporated her photography business, a milestone that lands almost exactly alongside Style Me Pretty's own founding in 2007. The two grew up in the wedding industry at the same time, and Merry's story is a working record of what changed across that stretch, and what it still takes to be booking six-figure weddings two decades in.

From Fashion Catalogs to the Aisle

Merry had already spent five years in photography before she shot her first wedding, working as an assistant to fashion photographers on catalog shoots. “This was the heyday of catalogs,” she says, describing work that “has a shelf life of, you know, a week.” The wedding industry she saw from the outside held little appeal by comparison. Weddings in that era, as she remembers them, meant “church basements, white tablecloths.”

Merry's timing put her close to the source of the shift. She knew Style Me Pretty's founders personally as the wedding industry started to change, and the two paths came up together.

“When I started shooting weddings, we were all coming up at the same time.”

Then the ground shifted under the entire industry at once. “The wedding mason jar was born, Style Me Pretty was born, Instagram and blogs were born, and it all kind of sparked this creative revolution in the wedding world that was captivating,” Merry says. She started second shooting and assisting other wedding photographers to learn the new terrain, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she genuinely enjoyed it.

“The appeal of having something that had a shelf life of forever was immense.”

Learning by Watching the Greats

Before she was fully independent, Merry worked her way up through nearly every role on someone else's set: fashion photographer's assistant, then digital tech, then second shooter for wedding photographers, then associate shooter. She still points to that ladder as the most underrated tool for building a photography business, even now, decades later. “I often say, do as I say, not as I do,” she says of the advice she gives the community of photographers and filmmakers she now teaches, “because I think there is some truth to, when you've been in the industry this long, that you probably don't do the things as well as you should.”

Even well into a successful wedding career, she kept taking calls to assist established fashion photographers, including Patrick Demarchelier, often for tasks with no glamour attached. “I was often doing things like holding an umbrella over his head,” she says, “nothing really glamorous, but I think that was always just a really big part of my process, learning from other people.”

That same instinct now shapes how she treats other vendors. She describes two well-known wedding planners she worked alongside recently in Italy who texted her mid-project about a dog's hip mobility, because the three of them had bonded over a shared interest in holistic wellness. “Getting to know each other on a deeper level has been a big part of that,” she says, “really just trying to align with people who are not only incredibly talented and creative and have great work ethic, but also people who are kind humans who you just enjoy being their friends.”

Shooting for Herself First

Ask Merry what has most reliably attracted clients who match her style, and the answer has nothing to do with marketing. “One of the ways that has always held true for me is just shooting for myself, and kind of shooting work that I'm passionate about,” she says, “work that really is coming from my creative heart.”

That Florida Keys editorial was the first time she put the philosophy into practice, and the method came straight out of her fashion background. “That's very common in the fashion world, is you test, you get together with the stylist, the hair and makeup artist, and you all test,” she says. It's a habit she has kept for her entire career, using self-directed shoots to show potential clients “where my eye is, what my perspective is,” rather than waiting for a client to hire that perspective sight unseen.

“Work that really is coming from my creative heart.”

An Editorial Eye at Every Wedding

The five years KT spent working for fashion photographers before she ever photographed a wedding still shows up in how she frames a shot. “When you're shooting for catalog or a publication, you shoot differently, because you're shooting to print it on the page, you're shooting to spread it across a gutter, you're shooting to put it on the cover,” she says. That training pointed her toward a different kind of image than most wedding photographers reach for. “It's like, no, we need to really create something iconic,” she says, “rather than just capturing what was in front of me.”

Two decades later, she still approaches a wedding day the same way, favoring the editorial and the iconic over straightforward documentation. It's the throughline connecting a self-funded Florida Keys test shoot to a Harper's Bazaar feature she would shoot years afterward.

Chasing Global, Finding It

Merry's earliest weddings were shot around South Florida, largely in the Florida Keys, a destination in name only. “It wasn't the destinations that I was hoping for,” she says. “I really had my sights set on global.” She marketed and portfolio-built her way toward the destination photographer she wanted to become before the bookings caught up, and eventually they did: the Maldives, Ireland, and, in her words, “all over the world.”

Some of those bookings became the career highlights she still returns to first. She climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with a couple who had just come from their pre-wedding session in Chiang Mai, Thailand, then documented them on safari in Tanzania. “That's the hardest I've worked for one shoot,” she says of the climb. Later, an editorial she shot with a wedding team in Hangzhou, China, ran in Harper's Bazaar, timed just before COVID-19 travel restrictions shut the region down. “We just barely got in by the skin of our teeth,” she says.

The novelty of any single location wears off eventually. One kind of setting hasn't: “I'll never tire of beautiful architecture and villas and backdrops in Europe,” Merry says.

“I really had my sights set on global.”

Reading a New Generation of Couples

Merry has noticed shifts in her clientele's wants and needs when it comes to their respective generation: Millennial or Gen-Z.

What she's noticed matters more than the label. Clients now arrive more informed and more decisive than the couples she booked earlier in her career. “There's a level of sophistication and education, maybe it's just because they've grown up with so much information at their fingertips,” she says, in a way she says she didn't have. That shows up most clearly in how they plan: a “very much abundance mindset,” as she calls it, where couples aren't rattled by booking trends because “they know there's an abundance of talent out there, and they're willing to wait to make sure it's the right fit.” She's careful to note the pattern isn't universal, just consistent among the couples she personally books: “for the most part, especially the clients that I work with.”

Merry has adjusted her own habits alongside the shift, if imperfectly by her own account. She's candid that social media was never her strength. “I've really never been the best at it,” she says. “I was never one of those people that just really leaned in and capitalized on it.” What she has leaned into instead is a cautious first pass at artificial intelligence, testing it inside the community of photographers and filmmakers she educates. “I am definitely in the waters one step at a time,” she says, “but I'm working on some projects, and there's a lot of tools within my programs that we are now playing with AI, and that's really exciting.”

Growing Up Alongside Style Me Pretty

When Merry realized how close her own incorporation date sat to Style Me Pretty's founding, she said so unprompted: “We've kind of grown up together, if you will.” She's candid that there was a stretch where she felt she had outgrown the platform, a common trajectory for a photographer who started out shooting real weddings and moved toward the editorial end of the industry. But she's watched Style Me Pretty reposition itself toward that same luxury audience in recent years, and says so plainly:

“I was impressed... I think Style Me Pretty has really done a great job of growing up, and repositioning, and really appealing to the larger luxury audience.”

Two decades in, that's still the throughline: an eye trained in fashion, sharpened on other people's sets, pointed at the same instinct to make something iconic rather than just document what's in front of her.

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