Engagement photos have been a hot topic lately. The question is often asked, "why have them taken?" So what better way to answer that question than with a blog filled with more of my thoughts and opinions!
Married for nearly 14 years now (yes I had to take a minute to double check my math), Matt and I never had engagement pictures taken. Honestly, I am not sure why we didn't but I personally only used to associate those particular images to save-the-date cards, and we didn't plan on having.
But as we, ourselves, got into the photography side of things, we started to gain the knowledge of why it is best to have engagement pictures taken, even if you don't want them...and yes men, we are looking at you when we say that. It's rare that women don't want pictures with their future spouse, especially after she gets to sport a pretty little ring on a very important finger.
However, when the communication starts with clients about wedding packages and ideas and wishes for his/her wedding day, we do commonly hear," well I never thought about engagement pictures," and/or "I'm not sure we NEED them."
Well let me tell you something, engagement pictures, in our opinion, are pretty darn important for a number of reasons.
When seeking out a wedding photographer, we are most commonly found through a friend/family referral or a google search. Then a quick looksy at our website (thank you btw) gets you to contact us for pricing. The pricing and edits style may be your thing but you still have ZERO knowledge of the experience you'll have with working with us and you'll quickly learn it's truly all about the experience, especially when it comes to vibing with your wedding photographers. That being said, having engagement pictures gets you to meet us AND gets you to experience how we run our shoots.
If you've never had professional pictures taken, or even if you have, there is often a bit of insecurity the lies within you and/or your future spouse when in front of the camera. It's common and it's A-ok! Be upfront and honest about how you're feeling about having your picture taken. We will talk you through it and what better time to do that than BEFORE the wedding...during the engagement session!
Last but not least, while we keep in contact pretty frequently after you book with us, and get to build that relationship with each other, the engagement session often opens up a lot of ideas for poses and moments you then realize you'd like to incorporate into your wedding day. And we get to talk about those things and help create those for you, and that's pretty darn special for us!
We become more than just your photographers on your wedding day and we love building relationships with our clients, many of whom we still keep in contact with years later either through more photography moments and/or just because they want to remain a part of our lives, just as much as we want to remain in theirs!
So don't turn down the idea and offer for an engagement session (better yet, that's why we include it in almost all of our packages!) We want your wedding day to be as stress and worry free as possible, especially on the photography end of it.
And we were so fortunate to get a recent client to share her engagement session experience, the before and after, which we do feel is relatable to many of our clients!
"During my first phone call with Melissa she mentioned that their packages include an engagement shoot. We never had any type of photo shoot before so I went in as a ball of anxiety. I had no clue what to wear, how to do my hair or my makeup, what if the images turn out bad, what if we don’t like the photographers we hired, along with so many more what-ifs. As soon as we started, we both felt super awkward and stiff. Melissa and Matt’s personalities and just their overall dynamic helped ease almost all of our nerves in the first few minutes of the shoot and they made us feel so much more confident and comfortable with the poses. Looking back I am so grateful we did an engagement shoot, it cleared up any hesitations we had about them as photographers and hesitations with how we would look in the different poses. Now when wedding day comes around, we kind of have a feel for how to pose for certain pictures and even what angles and style poses we do and don’t like to make the wedding pictures feel natural and comfortable." -Katie Quillman
Now enough with the words; please enjoy highlights from some of the engagements sessions we've been fortunate to be a part of!
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