Engaged in Seattle

Monday, July 31, 2017

Engaged in Seattle

Engaged in Seattle

Disclosure: This post contains paid placement. All thoughts and opinions are my own!

It's almost the one month countdown until S and I say I DO! I can't believe we've been engaged for almost 11 months and soon we will get to call each other husband and wife! This past Saturday S and I, along with my Dad and Stepmom, headed up to Whidbey Island for our cake tasting, wine tasting and a visit to the farm providing our flowers; seriously such a fun day! As all the details begin to fall into place for our wedding, the love between S and I only continues to grow and we get more and more excited about celebrating with so many of our closest friends and family!

However, with so many things to consider in the planning of our big day it can also get easy to get lost in the details. S and I have made the intention throughout our wedding planning process to have fun, laugh a lot and find small moments to step away from wedding planning and just enjoy being engaged. One of the moments and days we have most enjoyed as an engaged couple was our engagement photo session.

It was a beautiful spring day in Seattle and we decided to have our engagement shoot where we currently find our most sense of place together, our West Seattle neighborhood. Our first stop was Lincoln Park, a lovely park that sits just north of the Fauntleroy ferry terminal on the shoreline of Puget Sound. Trails meander through fruit trees and evergreens out to a cliff with an amazing view of the sound and a trail that leads down to a rocky shoreline, saltwater pool and perfect spots for beach side picnics (stay tuned for our second stop . . . ).

Our photographer was one of our first vendors that we secured, as we knew having amazing photos of our big day was at the top of our list. We also knew we really wanted to have engagement photos to remember this special time together and to have a "practice" session with our photographer prior to our wedding to get comfortable with them and get comfortable taking photos together. (Also if you're not used to getting photographed yourself on the daily, it's a great chance to even just get comfortable in front of a camera.)

I also utilized our engagement photo shoot as a chance to have a trial session with my makeup artist. Something I highly recommend you do with your makeup artist and/or hair stylist prior to your big day if you are able. Wedding Wire's 20 Wedding Eye Makeup Tips Every Bride Needs to Know is super useful to check out prior to your makeup trial run to help you nail down your wedding beauty look.

In addition to getting comfortable in front of the camera together, the engagement photo shoot was also a chance for us to test out of if our photographer was going to work for our big day. Some questions we considered going in ~ Does their style mesh with ours? Do we like the photos we get back? How quickly do they return the photos? What's their communication like during the process? These are all questions to consider and if you don't like the answer it might be time to consider finding someone else to photograph your big day.

Hopefully, however, you absolutely love everything about the shoot, and you, your fiancé and your photographer all became besties and the photos turn out absolutely priceless. Once you've secured your wedding photographer, you'll want to create a wedding photography timeline to ensure incredible images when you tie the knot, something we are currently in the process of doing.

This Wedding Photography Timeline from Wedding Wire has been super helpful for helping us figure out the portraits we want, decide on locations we want to take our photos, settle the "first look" debate, know how long everything will take and help create a schedule for day-of. There are also two sample wedding photography timelines to help you get started! Seriously so helpful! The Wedding Family Portrait Checklist for Your Photographer is also a great resource to help you figure out who to include in your wedding portraits, as your photographer is likely to ask for this a little bit before the big day.

The first stop of our engagement photo shoot at Lincoln Park was such a special time in the woods amongst evergreens and cherry blossoms before we headed to our second stop along the water (stay tuned for those photos in a post coming soon!).  We will cherish these photos always and are so grateful we are taking time prior to our wedding to invest in creating images of our Big Day we will love forever.

What tips do you have for wedding photography? Regrets or praises regarding your wedding photographer or photography or engagement photos? Fun ideas for engagement or wedding photos? Would love any tips! Please leave them in the comments!

Engaged in Seattle,

xoxo

Photography: Studio Underground
Makeup: Marisa Peltier

Engaged in Seattle

Engaged in Seattle

Engaged in Seattle

Engaged in Seattle

Engaged in Seattle

1 comment :

  1. L and S, your photo's are just beautiful, just like the two of You! I wish you a long life full of LOVE! Aunt Jan

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