Congratulations on your engagement!! You’re wrapped up in excitement and starting to dream up all of the fun things that lay ahead for your planning, right?? Of course, most of us now-a-days are familiar with the staple on every wedding planning list — the engagement session. This is something that we’ve likely heard about time and again, be it through Facebook, Pinterest, or simply through our friends who have recently been engaged or married. To most, these sessions are simply seen as an opportunity to celebrate your engagement to your fiance and share it with the world through the photos that are created. While celebrating your engagement may be reason enough to plan a session, personally, I believe your engagement session should be about so much more. Lets dive in!
1. Sharing the News: You’re newly engaged and you want to share this news with the world! This is exciting news and it shouldn’t wait another day! Engagement sessions are a perfect way to document the next big milestone in your relationship and cherish those moments for as long as you live.
2. Celebrating Your Relationship: Your engagement session should share so much more with the world than just your big news. This is a chance to show off your love, and everything that makes it tick. In order to do so, its very important to me to personalize your session as much as possible. We’ll chat about what types of things interest you two as a couple, put a twist on it, and turn it into an awesome theme for a shoot! Examples of theme’s we’ve done in the past include movie nights, vintage cars, poker nights, boating, snowboarding, horseback riding, vintage golf and much more. Ultimately, personalizing the photo session makes for a fun and memorable experience that you can both look forward to.
3. Go Out and Do Something CRAZY: Engagement sessions don’t always have to be about a personal interest or something you do as a couple. These sessions can also be an opportunity to get out and do something absolutely wild that you wouldn’t dream of doing on any regular Tuesday evening. Live it up. Have some fun. Get crazy!! A quote from the stud in the photos below once we had finished our session — “That was the most fun I’ve had in my life.”
4. Break the Ice: Your wedding day is a culmination of years, upon years of anticipation, preparation and meticulous planning, all squeezed into a single day. With as much hustle-bustle as a typical wedding day sees, the last thing we want to do is add to that plate. Engagement sessions are a perfect way to meet, greet, and get used to working with your photographer (and vise versa). This will ensure nothing but smooth sailing on your big day! Lets face it…not everyone is as comfortable in front of a camera as Tyra Banks or Angelina Jolie…but by the time we’re done with your engagement session, I promise that YOU will be.
5. Variety: You’re going to look absolutely STUNNING on your wedding day. Your wedding album will be overflowing with stunning images of you and your fiance, dressed to the nines, and for the first few years (or more…or less), you’ll want every picture frame in your home filled with photos from your big day. As much as you love these photos, you’ll still likely want to have some variety. Maybe swap out a few here and there for a change of pace — different outfits, different settings, etc. Cue: the engagement session — for the win! 😉
6. Save-the-Dates: Remember how we spoke about sharing your big news with the world?? What a better way to do that than with a personalized Save-the-Date!! Save-the-Dates are fully customizable card-stock mailers that are a perfect and fun way of notifying family and friends that you intend to invite to your wedding. Save-the-Dates are typically sent out somewhere around six to eight months prior to your wedding, giving your friends and family a “heads-up” on the date you’ve chosen for the wedding. Formal invitations typically follow Save-the-Dates, but are sent much closer to the actual wedding date.
7. Just Because: If I had to estimate, I’d say about 75% (or more) of the couples that I have the opportunity to work with tell me that they have very few pictures of themselves, as a couple. This of course doesn’t include our “selfies” from that night at the bar, or the one Uncle Bill shared with us from Grandma’s birthday party. While those can most definitely be some of our most cherished memories, we have to admit that they aren’t always catching us at our best. Even if we wiped clean all of the other reasons for having your engagement photos done that are listed above, just doing them for the sake of doing them is reason enough. Time flies by in a heartbeat. Its important to capture the memories while they’re here, right now.
Ready to see what kind of fun we can dream up for YOUR session? Â Head on over the CONTACT page and drop us a line. Â We’d love to chat!!