“Next to weddings and bridal things, engagements are the thing we love the most! To inspire all couples that got engaged and thinking of having an engagement shoot, we asked Les Anagnou, one of our favorite photographers’ duo to tell us a thing or two about engagements and how they approach them! So, below you’ll find their precious insight and little engagement shoot tips. Make sure you check them out! “

Everything You Need to Know About Engagement Photos

Your engagement is one of the most exciting seasons of your life, and you should take the opportunity to document it with a photo session. Every couple deserves a collection of professional photos to look back on and cherish. One of the first mile markers in your wedding planning journey, engagement photos are more than fun snapshots to mark the special occasion. Engagement photos are more than fun snapshots. They’re one of the first mile markers in your wedding planning journey – and that is exciting!

Although fun, arranging for an engagement session is a fun, low-stress, wedding-day dry run. One of the primary benefits of doing an engagement session is that it will help you get used to being in front of the camera before your wedding. It will ease your nerves and show you a new perspective. Remembering back what you did at your engagement session will help make your portrait time more efficient on the big day and allow you to get even more photos you want during that time. Practice always makes perfect!

Let’s not forget that this is a fun time of your life to capture photos—you just got engaged, after all. We use this session to help our couples learn to perfect all sorts of flattering poses while capturing save-the-date and wedding-website content in the process many of them need. Plus, engagement sessions kick off one of your most important wedding-vendor relationships, the one with your wedding photographers. We enjoy this time very much because we get to experience your engagement bliss while getting to know you, something extremely important for both parties to feel comfortable and learn more about you before the big day.

How to Choose a Photographer

Being engaged is a fun time of your life to capture photos—you just said yes, after all! It can help you establish a relationship with your photographer so you’re comfortable with them, on your wedding day and help them learn more about you before the big day when there are stress and wedding jitters. While all photographers do a mix of portraits, candids, and formal poses, our individually unique editing style remains consistent—it’s our brand.

Whether you’re scouting Instagram for a local professional, binge-reading wedding blogs’ top photographers, or gathering friends’ recommendations, it’s important to take a step back and brainstorm the photo style to which you’re naturally drawn. Our style is light, airy, and ethereal, with an artistic touch. In one word, it’s timeless. The next essential step couples should keep in mind for choosing their wedding or engagement photographer is studying their personality. Sure, you’re not hiring the photographer to be your friend, but you’re spending the majority of your big day with this person. You want to enjoy their company! We want our personalities to mesh, that’s why we love to meet our potential couples. When you get to look back at your engagement photos afterward and evaluate the experience, you’ll also figure out which poses you love and maybe even some you don’t like. Giving your photographer this feedback will help make your wedding portraits even more successful and almost foolproof! We like scheduling quick and informal meetups, or at least FaceTime calls, to get to know each couple outside of email. Our approach is that communication is key. On your wedding day, we are on top of things and we’re next to our couples every step of the way. We will help you feel at ease and relaxed, giving us the editorial and romantic shots you chose us for. 99.9% of our couples are not models and we know how difficult it is to stand in front of a camera. After all, occasionally, we as well get in front of the camera to understand exactly how our couples feel, experience the same anxiety but navigate through it in the same way we will help them when the day comes.

When to Take Your Engagement Photos

Many couples identify engagement sessions as a way to get some pretty photos of themselves that are a lot nicer than the selfies they take while out on the weekends. An engagement session will result in photos that express your personality and love, perfect for your Save the Dates and for hanging on the walls of your home or sharing with your friends and family! Once you’ve hired your photographer, it’s time to schedule your engagement shoot. You need to book a session around 10 months or more in advance, if you’re planning to use these photos for save-the-dates (which go out six to eight months before your wedding). That way we have plenty of time to edit the images, so you can get those invitations designed. You have more flexibility if you have a longer engagement, or you’re not planning to use photos for save-the-dates.

While your wedding day timeline may eventually be a little stricter, when scheduling your engagement session, we can have more control over the time of day you’d like to shoot. The best time of day to be photographed is when the sun isn’t so high up in the sky, just after sunrise or just before sunset. We always advise couples to start their session around 4:30 pm in the fall months, but 6:30 pm in the spring or summer, if opting for around sunset time. The light at this time will be more flattering on your skin, you won’t have to worry about the bright sun in your eyes, and you may even get lucky with an epic sunset. In our opinion, spring and fall are the best times to have an engagement photo session because you avoid extreme temperatures and still have pretty, colorful foliage. We would suggest you avoid the dead of summer given those all-too-common humidity hiccups, but in some cases, the summer season works wonders especially if you’re planning a holiday on a Greek island. We recommend evening or early morning hours for soft, warm sunrise and sunset hues.

Where to Take Your Engagement Photos

Choosing a location is the fun part of an engagement session and in Greece, there are plenty of beautiful destinations to choose from! Upon finding the perfect engagement photo spot, you can either pick a meaningful location for you and your love story or rely on your photographer’s expertise. If you have a special spot in mind—a first-date location, your favorite café, or your favorite island, let us know so we can scope it out, get some ideas, and figure out any necessary permissions for photographing. Depending on distance, we can usually squeeze in two nearby locations during your engagement session.

While it’s fun to have engagement shots from a nostalgic location, we love when couples lean on us for inspiration. We’re always scouting out new or lesser-known photography spots, so we’re excited when a couple asks for our opinion. If you and your significant other love travel, you can also opt to get your engagement photos on vacation. It’s hard to beat engagement photos from, say, the little streets in Mykonos or the colorful sunset of Caldera—especially if travel is your “thing” as a couple. Whichever the destination, we’d love to accompany you.

What to Wear for Engagement Photos

Style is important when having your photo taken. The most common question we get leading up to an engagement session is “what do we wear?” We are always willing to help you with this, and even review photos of your outfit ideas and tell you what would work best. An engagement session is a great excuse to go shopping for something new! Wearing new clothes will also ensure that they’re fresh and not yet faded. You can even bring a second outfit, maybe something a little fancier, to change into midway through your session. If you are buying a fun new outfit, don’t have your engagement-shoot day be the first day you wear it. Instead, wear it to dinner, get a few iPhone photos in it, and see if you truly like how it looks. Nothing’s worse than realizing during the shoot that your shirt wrinkles terribly, your pants stretch out after 30 minutes, or you just don’t like how it looks.

On the subject of clothes, our biggest recommendation is to be sure you try everything on in advance to make sure you’re comfortable! You don’t want to be adjusting your clothes during the shoot and the more comfortable you feel in your outfit, the better you’ll feel overall, resulting in effortless images. If you’re going to wear a pair of heels, bring along some comfy flats if you’ll be doing some walking – especially if your session will take place in the summer months on a Greek island.

Less is more when it comes to selecting the perfect engagement-photo outfit. We recommend soft, subtle, and neutral colors for a classic, timeless look. It’s always foolproof to opt for muted tones like beiges, taupes, blacks, and whites. These are the most flattering. We’d suggest you’d avoid deeply saturated or bright colors like vibrant reds or oranges; those colors will reflect back on your face, especially in the sun. However, reds and oranges aren’t totally off-limits for engagement shoots—you just have to get creative. If you love red, for example, we’ll suggest you incorporate it in a different way that’s not so close to the face, such as a skirt or shoes.

We are always recommending choosing a set of 3 complementary colors in your outfits so you’re coordinating naturally. Solid colors are generally best, avoiding too much solid white, and one of you can wear some pattern to mix things up. Something a lot of people don’t consider when choosing their engagement session outfits is the aesthetics of the location.

Make sure you match the style with the surroundings – we can help you with that!

As you can understand, it’s all about feeling your best. A final way to help achieve that goal is to have your hair and makeup done. This makes your engagement session a great time to schedule your hair and makeup trials! It’s also a great idea to have your nails well-manicured in case of any close-ups, and since your engagement ring will be photographed, you’ll want to clean it in advance with some mild soap and warm water.

To wrap it up and put it in a (ring) box…

Engagement photos are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture the sense of joy and excitement before marrying the one you love. But perhaps more importantly, they’re an opportunity to get to know your photographer and to loosen up in front of the camera before the big day comes around. You’ll undoubtedly treasure your wedding photos, but many couples feel their engagement photos are a more authentic reflection of them. Simply put, engagement photos capture you in a more everyday style, in a natural element, spending time with your favorite person. As a bonus, you’ll have the total creative freedom to choose whatever location, clothing, and overall style best represents you as a couple. So, whether you take images in your favorite city or on your sofa at home, you’ll have a collection of memories that are most meaningful to you!
 
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