The very first thing I thought was that dress is not very flattering on her. Shelooks like a bit of a big girl, but not too big. But I feel like that dress makes her appear bigger. Something about the high waist line. But of course, that has nothing to do with you.
The second thing I thought was that alot of her smiles look very apprehensive. Whether they are supposed to look happy or moody or whatever, they still all look like an apprehensive version of that. Again, that doesn't have to much to do with you. I suppose that it's the photographer's job to draw out good expressions, but she strikes me as a person who is maybe uncomfortable with her self and very difficult to get genuine looks out of. So, no foul there.
The third thing, which has already been mentioned are the very, very blown out highlights. Now, whether you blew them out in camera, or captured them perfectly and then blew them out in post makes little difference. Now, you've already stated that it's your style, so I understand that anything I say doesn't really matter. But. The blown out highlight are very distracting. If I take a perfectly focused shot, then gaussian blur the whole thing, and then someone says 'you missed focus', I can say 'No I didn't. I did that on purpose in post', and that would be true. But it doesn't matter if the bottom line is that the whole photo is blurry.
Blown out highlights are very rarely good looking, with the exception pretty much only being very well done high key photography. As far as doing to it draw attention to the bride's face, no amount of removing detail from the dress will do that. Blown out highlights will almost always be the first thing that grabs your eyes' attention. So by making them blown out, you are in fact diverting more attention away from the bride's face. If they were perfectly exposed in camera, it would be very easy to push the whole dress very far to the right without actually losing it.
Now, I'm not trying to be harsh or a jerk, (but that seems to be how everyone takes it anyways). But don't let "Style" be your Get Out Of Criticism Free card. I understand the importance of style, and ultimately, you're free to do anything that makes you happy. But when style goes against what is generally believe to be desirable, especially in matters that are typically not matters of style, perhaps it's time to reconsider. I think that if you showed some of these to a panel of experienced photographers, there would be a a general consensus that the highlights are blown out and that it's not a desirable look. So, again, you could relegate that to Style and dismiss it, which is perfectly your right. But at what point does Style become a moot point?
I'm not in any way trying to be insulting or call you a bad photographer or say that your photos suck or anything. So don't take it that way. But too often on this board and others, I see people dismiss valid critiques because "that's just their style". And this has been my feeling on the subject the whole time. You just happen to be the person that I'm actully typing it to.
As for other critique, I think 10 is most definitely the best image, but I would of course, like to see more highlight detail. 12 and 13 are also quite nice. I like the lens flare in 12, it's nice and even, and not filled with purple and green polygons. And I really like the way the the body/dress line continue and finish the S curve that is started by the bridge beam.
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I have never been to Thanksgiving Point... not sure why... but I must visit there soon. Looks beautiful!
