Engagement session

Save-the-dates typically go out six to eight months before a wedding, which sets the timing for this session rather than taste does. Booking six to nine months out leaves room for the print run and — more importantly — means photographing in a different season from the wedding itself. Two sets of photographs taken in the same park in the same month is one set of photographs, and couples who book their engagement session for the month before the wedding usually regret it for exactly that reason.

What separates this from a couple session is length, output and purpose. Two hours across two locations with travel between them and an outfit change, against ninety minutes in one area. Sixty retouched photographs cropped for a save-the-date, a wedding website header and a phone screen, against forty that answer to nothing. Price it against what you need the pictures to do: if there is no save-the-date and no website, the couple session is the honest recommendation and it costs less.

The outfit change is what makes two hours worth booking rather than ninety minutes. One set dressed the way you would want to be seen on a mantelpiece, one set in what you actually wear — and the second set is where the photographs that look like your relationship come from. Bring the dressed-up option for the first location while the light is highest, because it is the one that needs the better light and the tidier background.

This session is also the rehearsal, and couples who have done one are noticeably easier to photograph on the wedding day. You find out how you look together, which side each of you prefers, and what it feels like to be directed — so the twenty minutes of portraits between the ceremony and the reception is a thing you have already done rather than a thing happening to you in front of a hundred and fifty people. From $450, delivered within five business days.