CONGRATULATIONS! You’re engaged! You’re getting married! This is such an exciting season as you look forward to not only your wedding, but your marriage. You’re going to spend the rest of your life with your fiance. Let’s start it off on the right foot with some amazing engagement photos. I’ll take care of the actual photography, and all you need to worry about it what to wear to the engagement session. And don’t worry, I’ve got you there too!

I know you’ve been dressing yourself for many years and generally look awesome. You can pull off the top bun and baggy sweater with distressed denim better than most people. But this is not the time for that. It’s the time to put on an amazing dress, get your makeup done professionally, and look like the show-stopper you are.

When you book your engagement session, you gain access to my online styling guide, which is super helpful and fool-proof. But, before you can start styling, you’ll need to choose a colour palette and a theme.

Your engagement session colour palette

When choosing what to wear to your engagement session, you want to make sure you and your fiance coordinate. My style of photography lives on rich, vibrant colours. So, while everyone looks great in black, I wouldn’t recommend both showing up in neutrals. Find a great seasonal colour, make sure it pops, and get yourself a dress in it. That colour will be your anchor. A deep burgundy or mustard for fall, or a mauve or blue in the spring look great. Next, you’ll want to find some accessories for you and a shirt for your fiance in coordinating colour schemes.

Find some great colour schemes on my Pinterest board.

Once again, the key is coordinating not matching. If you show up twinning, well, they’re your engagement photos. This is where the online styling guide comes in handy. Once you’ve picked your colour scheme (and it will suggest some), it’ll do the coordinating for you. But you’ll also have the option of an outfit change, so you’ll have to do this twice. Which bring me to…

Choosing your outfit “theme”

No, I don’t mean cowboy or anything like that. This is about the feel of your session. If you’ve chosen me as your photographer, there’s a good chance we have a similar style and you’re leaning toward what I’ve entitled “boho-lite”. By that I mean you don’t look like you’ve recently stepped out of the 70’s, but your outfits do seem to be inspired by them. Dresses with ruffle-esque embellishments, embroidered patterns, colour pops.

With an outfit change, I generally suggest my couples choose a more casual, relaxed style of outfit to start with, and change into a more “boho-lite” outfit after 15 minutes or so. There’s something intimate about engagement photos where you’re dressed much like you normally are when you’re together. Even so, “casual and relaxed” should still be a little more dressed up than your top bun and baggy sweater. Consider a maxi skirt instead of jeans, or a nice blouse under your cardigan.

But the real magic happens once you’ve dressed up a little. These are the photos you’ll be wanting to put on your save-the-date card to send to all your friends and family. For these, make sure your fiance is in slacks or dress pants to match your level of dressiness. Coordinating is about more than colours and one of you shouldn’t look more dressed up and fancy than the other. For this, I recommend thinking of what you two would wear to someone else’s wedding.

So it all comes down to colour palette and theme. After that, the styling guide does the rest for you. You can either use it for inspiration, or you can shop from your couch and wait in anticipation for your outfits to show up at your door.

Looking for some more great information on looking good for your session? Check out this blog post.