3 Tips for Choosing Engagement Session Outfits

While I love all the excitement and details of a wedding day, engagement sessions are unique in their own way.  Not only is it intimate, it also gives couples a chance to showcase their personalities and stories through the location and outfits they choose.  In this blog, I’m sharing a few tips on what to wear!

I believe that photos that make us happy are mostly because of how we feel at the time the photos were taken.  I want everyone to feel their best before they even see me, so I give everyone a portrait guide before each session.  Much of that gives some insight to help you decide what to wear.  I recommend having two outfits, but some couples choose to wear one, either because they really like it or because they don’t want to take time out of the session to find a place to change.  Here are a few tips to help you narrow down your options.

1.       Dress comfortably.

You don’t want to remember your engagement session as the day you wore a top that was too tight or an itchy sweater.  If it’s 100 degrees, try to wear something that’s won’t make you sweat more.  If it’s 25 degrees (like in Katherine and Anthony's session, pictured above), make sure you have layers under your outfit and gloves to put on between photos. A scarf and a peacoat can be just as pretty as a sundress.  Check out my Pinterest board for some of my favorite outfits for cold weather sessions!

Wear comfortable shoes! Take it from me: after I finished my graduation session, it was about a half mile walk back to my car. I really didn’t want to make the choice between wearing the shoes that hurt me for the whole session and walking barefoot. If you’re dying to wear a certain pair of shoes for your session, make sure you have a more comfortable pair to change into if you have a lot of walking to do.  Here’s a tip that I picked up from my high school color guard days: carefully placed electrical tape on the insides of your shoes can save your feet a lot of pain.

2.       Coordinate with each other.

You can coordinate colors without matching, like the “red top, black pants” my cousins and I would wear for our family pictures at Christmas when we were little.  You could choose a color scheme, such as wearing different shades of blue or both of you wearing something red and black.  You could also complement each other’s outfits.  If your favorite dress is purple and your fiancé(e) doesn’t have anything purple, you can choose an accessory in a similar color to something they do have. 

 Matt’s blue shirt and red tie both complement the flowers in Amethyst’s dress. Her dress also was perfect for this April session and looked beautiful with the colors of Disney’s Polynesian resort! Which brings me to #3…

3.       Consider the location.

You can coordinate your outfits with the color scheme of the location.  If there are lots of fall leaves at this location, you could wear warmer hues to complement them.  If your session is in the snow (which would be amazing), you could wear bolder colors to stand out.  Tori and Michael’s first outfits complemented the colors of the desert garden so well, and their second outfits showed off their matching shoes while coordinating with the sunflowers.

If you’re newly engaged, I hope this helps you feel more confident going into your engagement session! Click here to set up your own engagement session or see more of my blog below:

Crozet, Virginia Engagement Session: Katherine and Anthony

I always watch the forecast closely and frequently in the week prior to a session, and Katherine and Anthony's session was no different.  Yet somehow, I woke up, saw that the forecast had changed from "cloudy" to "partly cloudy," then looked out the window to see the roads covered in snow!  Nobody in the area was expecting this to happen.  Luckily, it melted enough to clear the roads so I could meet Katherine and Anthony for the session.  This would be the first session I'd ever done in the dead of winter and it would be in Virginia, so I knew this would be my coldest session yet.  What I didn't know was exactly how cold it would be.   Although the snow all melted before I could get a shot of Katherine's ring in the snow, it was still cold enough for us to take pictures in front of a frozen pond.

After meeting through their friends a few years earlier, Anthony proposed to Katherine in Washington DC on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, which faces the Washington Monument.  They wanted to have their engagement photos in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, so in the week between Christmas and New Year's, we met up in Crozet, slightly west of where Katherine and I both grew up. Their outfits were the perfect winter engagement session outfits; the colors were so classically wintery, Katherine's red sweater was a perfect fit for that time between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and Katherine's mom made the scarves that both of them wore to the session.  Katherine's yellow-gold ring was covered by her gloves for a good part of the session, but it made for some cute photos of her trying to keep Anthony's hands warm.  We ended the session a little earlier than I usually do because the windchill was so brutal (by our Virginia standards), but the golden hour lighting kept us out for just a few more pictures.  

I'm so glad we were able to brave the cold at least for a little while and that the snow didn't keep us from driving to these mountain views.  Since apparently everyone else in Crozet decided to stay inside that day (not that we can blame them), we had this gorgeous landscape all to ourselves.  It's always an honor to be part of putting these sweet moments into pictures, but it's even more special in the wide open with absolutely nobody else in sight.  I can't wait to come back to Charlottesville for the next part of Katherine and Anthony's story!