Newsflash: you’re engaged to be married! Your engagement is one of the most exciting seasons of your life, and you should take the opportunity to document it with a photo session. Every couple deserves a collection of professional photos to look back on and cherish. One of the first mile markers in your wedding planning journey, engagement photos are more than fun snapshots to mark the special occasion. This post is all about engagement photography and more specifically about:
- Choosing a Photographer
- Planning When
- Planning Where
- Planning What to Wear
Although fun, we consider this low-stress photo session like a wedding-day dry run. Let’s not forget that this is a fun time of your life to capture photos—you just got engaged, after all. We use this session to help our couples learn to perfect all sorts of flattering poses while capturing save-the-date and wedding-website content in the process many of them need. Plus, engagement sessions kick off one of your most important wedding-vendor relationships, the one with your wedding photographers. We enjoy this time very much because we get to experience your engagement bliss while getting to know you, something extremely important for both parties to feel comfortable and learn more about you before the big day.
How to Choose a Photographer
While all photographers do a mix of portraits, candids, and formal poses, our individually unique editing style remains consistent—it’s our brand. Whether you’re scouting Instagram for a local professional, binge-reading wedding blogs’ top photographers, or gathering friends’ recommendations, it’s important to take a step back and brainstorm the photo style you’re naturally drawn to. Our style is light, airy, and ethereal, with n artistic touch. In one word, it’s timeless. The next essential step couples should keep in mind for choosing their wedding or engagement photographer is studying their personality. Sure, you’re not hiring the photographer to be your friend, but you’re spending the majority of your big day with this person. You want to enjoy their company! We want our personalities to mesh, that’s why we love to meet our potential couples. We like scheduling quick and informal meetups, or at least FaceTime calls, to get to know each couple outside of email.
When to Take Your Engagement Photos
Once you’ve hired your photographer, it’s time to schedule your engagement shoot. You need to book a session around 10 months or more in advance, if you’re planning to use these photos for save-the-dates (which go out six to eight months before your wedding). That way we have plenty of time to edit the images, so you can get those invitations designed. You have more flexibility if you have a longer engagement, or you’re not planning to use photos for save-the-dates. In our opinion, spring and fall are the best times to have an engagement photo session because you avoid extreme temperatures and still have pretty, colorful foliage. We would suggest you avoid the dead of summer given those all-too-common humidity hiccups, but in some cases, the summer season works wonders especially if you’re planning a holiday on a Greek island. We recommend evening or early morning hours for soft, warm sunrise and sunset hues.
Where to Take Your Engagement Photos
Upon finding the perfect engagement photo spot, you can either pick a meaningful location for you and your love story or rely on your photographer’s expertise. If you have a special spot in mind—a first-date location, your favorite café, or your favorite island, let us know so we can scope it out, get some ideas, and figure out any necessary permissions for photographing.
While it’s fun to have engagement shots from a nostalgic location, we love when couples lean on us for inspiration. We’re always scouting out new or lesser-known photography spots, so we’re excited when a couple asks for our opinion. If you and your significant other love travel, you can also opt to get your engagement photos on vacation. It’s hard to beat engagement photos from, say, the little streets in Mykonos or the colorful sunset of Caldera—especially if travel is your “thing” as a couple. Whichever the destination, we’d love to accompany you.
What to Wear for Engagement Photos
Less is more when it comes to selecting the perfect engagement-photo outfit. We recommend soft, subtle, and neutral colors for a classic, timeless look. It’s always foolproof to opt for muted tones like beiges, taupes, blacks, and whites. These are the most flattering. We’d suggest you’d avoid deeply saturated or bright colors like vibrant reds or oranges; those colors will reflect back on your face, especially in the sun.
However, reds and oranges aren’t totally off-limits for engagement shoots—you just have to get creative. If you love red, for example, we’ll suggest you incorporate it in a different way that’s not so close to the face, such as a skirt or shoes.
While it may be tempting to wear a brand-new outfit, comfort should be your priority and we don’t mean yoga pants or baggy sweatshirts. You can still buy a fun new outfit, but don’t have your engagement-shoot day be the first day you wear it. Instead, wear it to dinner, get a few iPhone photos in it, and see if you truly like how it looks. Nothing’s worse than realizing during the shoot that your shirt wrinkles terribly, your pants stretch out after 30 minutes, or you just don’t like how it looks.
Engagement photo sessions are a great time to experiment with wedding-day makeup, too. If you have a vendor in mind for day-of beauty, use your engagement shoot as a trial run. It’s great to see how makeup reads in a professional photograph. What feels like a lot of makeup often doesn’t show up as dramatically on camera as it does in the mirror. It’s helpful to be able to make any makeup tweaks after the engagement session. That way your big day will be flawless!
Engagement photos are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture the sense of joy and excitement before marrying the one you love. But perhaps more importantly, they’re an opportunity to get to know your photographer and to loosen up in front of the camera before the big day comes around.
Why take engagement photos? There’s no doubt you’ll treasure your wedding photos, but many couples feel their engagement photos are a more authentic reflection of them. Simply put, engagement photos capture you in a more everyday style, in a natural element, spending time with your favorite person. As a bonus, you’ll have the total creative freedom to choose whatever location, clothing, and overall style best represents you as a couple. So whether you take images in your favorite city or on your sofa at home, you’ll have a collection of memories that are most meaningful to you.
Want to know more or book a dreamy engagement session with us? Contact us!
