Learning Lightroom: Wedding Photos

I've been tinkering with Adobe Lightroom for the past few months, thinking I could learn how to edit our wedding pictures if needed, because honestly I'm worried about the output of the editing hehe. Since we're on a budget and couldn't afford to hire photographers who are experts in my preferred style, I decided to learn.

And learn, I did!

I'm definitely not there yet but I'm so excited to learn.

Here are a couple of my edits. The original photos are all taken from Unsplash. I would've preferred getting unedited samples but I couldn't find a bunch of raw wedding photos! So yeah, these will do.

Here's the before and after of the photo above:

I brightened the photo, warmed it up, desaturated the greens, and made the trees pop out from the background a little more. This is definitely closer to the output I have in mind, and I didn't have to use a preset!

Thanks to the guys at Smart for providing the photos. If you would like to learn photography you should check out their online photography classes and courses. They even have a module on lightroom.

The original photos are already great on their own, they're clear and are frkn stock quality. I just wanted to get some good photos for practice hehe.

I think I have a problem with exposure though. I want to brighten the picture without losing the details of the subject. Tips are much appreciated!

The goal is to produce photos similar to what these photographers do. Long shot, but willing to learn! What do you think?