It is a question I am asked many times each year by many different types of brides: Do I need an engagement session?  Some are asking because they have already gotten engagement pictures done by a friend or another photographer before booking their photographer (this happened to Michael and I!).  Some are asking because they genuinely aren’t very interested in a session of “just them”.  Some are asking because the collection prices are just a little higher than they are looking for and they are wondering if taking the engagement session off might change the pricing just enough.  I understand each of these reasons!  But the answer, my friends, is an emphatic YES!  I could gush about this for hours, but will spare you all and break it down into 3 main reasons!

1). Familiarity and comfort with your photographer!  During engagement sessions, I get to learn a lot about my couples and how they interact together.  I get find out which poses work best for them, how they are most comfortable in front of my camera and how I can really bring out their beauty and show their love!  And on the flip side, it gives my couples a lot of experience at posing and interacting with someone photographing them, which can be an awkward thing.  It takes away SO many nerves on the wedding day to have already worked with and experienced someone photographing you- especially if it is the same person photographing you that day!  As “out of the way” and stealthy (is that a word?!) as your photographer tries to be on your wedding day, they have to be everywhere and it is easier when you have experienced that before!

2). Relationships, not transactions. As a photographer, I seek to build relationships with my clients and create a full experience for them that ends in them feeling like they have just another great friend tagging along on their day!  I don’t have any desire to be just another vendor for hire. I think of my couples as my friends, and people who’s wedding day and stories mean a lot to me…and having an engagement session, meeting for coffee for some initial planning, keeping in touch throughout the process…these things create an EXPERIENCE for my brides that is about much more than exchanging a check for photographs.  I adore spending this engagement session time with my couples!

3). Because you deserve it!  I wrote about it on the “My Why” page of my website, but for me, seeing the images our wedding photographer took of us during our engagement session was extremely meaningful— I was very surprised at how much emotion it stirred up in me.  Seeing what our relationship, our love, looked like to someone else was just incredible— because it looked like how it FELT to me!  Something I couldn’t describe in words, but could be found through a lens.  I think EVERY couple who has committed their lives to each other, who has made the choice to love each other every day forever regardless of whatever comes, deserves to have that love DOCUMENTED in a meaningful way!  Having a beautiful set of images documenting THIS time, this sweet time when you have made this all important decision, helps remind Michael and I that as much as we LOVE our kids and the life we have built together…it all started with US. Him and I, and our choice to love each other completely and thoroughly and endlessly.

Michael and I had a good friend take some images immediately after our engagement- we were wedding planning in 5 months and we had to MOVE! When we booked our wedding photographer, someone who I would have changed our DATE for if she had been unavailable I felt so strongly about her, and she said she included one in her wedding collections, we threw caution to the wind and went for it!  And I am so so thankful that we did.