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I just finished watching the Royal Wedding and my husband commented on how regal Kate looked. While the setting, her beautiful dress and tiara helped create that appearance, it was her posture that truly sealed the royal look.

So many of us now have jobs where we spend our days hunched over computers and unfortunately that wrecks our natural posture. Poor posture can also wreck your wedding photos, particularly if you are wearing a strapless dress. Photoshop is a great tool for fixing stray hairs, or eliminating blemishes and dark circles, but it can do very little for hunched shoulders. So do yourself a favor, take a page from now Princess Katherine’s book, and keep those shoulders back, whether you are standing or sitting.

If you are anything like me, this is not something that naturally just happens. There are 2 solutions to this: 1) Have your photographer remind you to stand up straight and 2) strengthening exercises. To keep up the appearance of perfect posture, I asked my photographer to kindly remind me to stand up straight whenever we were doing posed pictures. It made a tremendous difference in our portraits. In addition to that, I also did some basic strengthening exercises in advance.

Use an exercise band with a handle on each end to do back rows. Include this exercise to reduce crouched shoulders and a forward-head posture. Do this exercise first by looping the band around an immovable object, raised to just below your shoulders, or loop the band around your feet (see image below). Then, with your palms facing each other, keep abs tight, bring elbows behind you, bringing shoulder blades down and together, squeezing your shoulder blades together for three seconds. Return in a slow and controlled manner to the start position and repeat for three sets of 10 repetitions. Make sure you don’t hike your shoulders while doing this, keep them relaxed and down.

Hopefully this will help you look as poised as Princess Katherine on your fairy tale wedding day!