Getting Ready for Engagement Photos

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You’re engaged! How exciting! And now it’s time for your engagement photos. But, what should you do to be getting ready for engagement photos? If you spend a little bit of time up front planning, you will end up with engagement photos that are not only beautiful, but that coordinate with your wedding, and you will be able to seamlessly use on your wedding website, save the dates, and any other place in your wedding.

Define Your Feel

This is a very important first step. You will want your engagement photos to be an extension of your wedding, and a little sneak peek of what’s to come. How formal is your wedding? What are your colors? Is there a theme? Ask yourself these questions and then coordinate your engagement photo session to match. The following steps will fall into place once you have an overarching feel for your photographs.

Colors

While you don’t want to be too bogged down by color, an idea of your wedding color palette will be very helpful when you go to take your engagement photos. If you want to use them on your wedding site, and your wedding theme is a white winter wedding, and you are wearing a summer red dress in all of them, you might end up with photos that aren’t very usable for you. Planning out your colors ahead of time will allow your photos to flow into whatever site or save the date you use them on.

Outfits

Engagement photos, which are often used on save the dates or on your wedding website, should be an extension of your wedding. Now, your outfits clearly shouldn’t match your wedding attire. But, there should be some coordination. Are you getting married at a black tie affair off the coast of Spain? Well then maybe you don’t want your engagement photo outfit to be cut off shorts and cowboy boots. Where that might be more appropriate if you are having a casual barn wedding. You’ll want to use your engagement photos for more than just posting on social media. So, make sure that they are versatile enough that you will be able to use them throughout the wedding process. It will also help cue your guests into the level of formality for your wedding.

Location

You know what they say, location, location, location. You’ll want to think about location for your shoot when planing your engagement photos. Sometimes this is easy, you’re having a beach wedding, take photos on the beach! But, sometimes, especially with destination weddings, this may not be possible. So, think about the other parts of your wedding. If your wedding is very formal, find a local hotel or city building with beautiful ornate architecture. If your wedding is modern, think about taking photos at a modern art exhibit. You don’t need to match your wedding location with your engagement photo location, but having them aesthetically coordinate with each other or make sense will help you when you want to use those photos later on in your wedding prep and planning.

Photographer

Finding a great photographer is imperative to having a great engagement photo session, and I highly suggest using your wedding photographer for your engagement photos as well. Many wedding photographers will have an engagement session as part of their wedding packages. Or you could add it on a la carte. Having your engagement session with your wedding photographer will give you the chance to meet them and get comfortable with them before your big day. Most of us don’t have our pictures professionally taken all the time. And, at first it can be a little uncomfortable posing, kissing, and twirling in front of someone new. Get those new jitters out of the way for your engagement session and then you’ll be more comfortable at your wedding.

What other tips would you add for getting ready for your engagement photos?

If you like this, check out our engagement photos reveal and our proposal story!