May 8, 2024
Annette Ambrose Photography, an Arizona-based Destination Wedding Photographer, spills exactly how to style your engagement session as a recent bride-to-be.
You guys, it’s finally my turn to spill the tea!
I’m engaged and getting ready for my engagement session. This past year (2023), I got the best Christmas present ever—a fiancé! Yep, this girl is finally getting married… and it’s happening in Italy! But before I dive into planning my dream destination wedding in Italy, let’s chat about how I prepped for our engagement photos.
As a photographer, I’ve spent countless hours behind the lens capturing love stories, but being in front of the camera? That’s a different story!
So, how did I get ready for this exciting moment? Let me break it down for you:
Things That I Did that I Recommend Doing to Style Your Engagement Session
DO’s of Getting Picture-Perfect Ready:
As a quick disclaimer, not everyone needs to do these things to style their engagement session but I am sharing to what I would do and what I did. Remember, you are beautiful in your skin and these are some things I treated myself on because this is the one time I can.
ONE | Groomed to the Nines
- Eyebrows: Nano-bladed for that flawless look.
- Hair: I updated my hair color and added extensions for extra volume and length.
- Skin: I started a Retin-A journey months before to prep my skin.
- Botox: Touched up my Botox for a fresh and youthful look.
- Nails: I got gel nails done, because who wants chipped nails on the big day?
TWO | Outfit Selection
Being in my bridal era, I can’t get enough of wearing white! Since we are having a black-tie wedding, I wanted to incorporate that into our engagement shoot.
My fiance dressed up in his black tie attire, and I wore two different white mini dresses: one with big puffy sleeves and one with a big bow train. To accompany that, I had my favorite gold jewelry that I am always wearing. It is from a brand called Mo + Jo which recently came out with a bridal line I wore a couple of pieces from that bridal line with my two dresses.
I am such an accessory person so I brought accessories like my white cat eye sunglasses and my white bridal Jacquemus bag.
ALL OF THE DRESS OPTIONS:
Anthropologie
Petal & Pup
LULUS
Revolve
Meshki
THREE | Booked Our Photographer
We chose a talented photographer, Brooklyn Photo, who shoots both film and digital, giving us the best of both worlds. I truly can’t believe how perfect she made the entire experience.
FOUR | Vision Board and Props
Engagement Vision Board: I am all about over-communicating with my photographer! Everyone has their vision of how they see things and how I wanted to relay my vision to our photographer was giving her all my inspo and background to what I was in vision for my shoot. I made a notes page of all the ideas I had so it gave our photographer a little idea of the props I had planned etc. Let’s say, our photographer understood the assignment and helped us create our editorial, vogue, film, classy white, black-tie dream shoot.
Champagne Pop: I brought a couple of bottles of champagne to pop because who doesn’t love a good champagne picture? I feel like the symbolic meaning behind a champagne pop is toasting to our future and it’s fun to capture that moment with my fiancé.
Italy Newspaper Announcement: I decided to make these little newspaper announcements with all the details of our wedding to give out to guests. It was a kind of fun, little trend to make to announce our Italy Wedding and kind of fun to shoot with. I made these newspapers announcements right in Canva and printed the newspapers through a company called “Newspaper Club.”
FIVE | Location Scouting:
This was easily the hardest part of planning our engagement shoot.
Originally I was torn between Superstition Mountains and Downtown Phoenix. However, after countless hours of scrolling around Instagram, I found this one location that I loved! The catch? I had no way to actually pinpoint the exact spot.
So, I leaned into my photographer background, and I scouted the location myself!
It took me over a month to find this location online I was searching for and the only reason I found it was because I was heading to a friend’s house! As I was driving, I realized that the mountain looked SO FAMILIAR!
The location we went with doesn’t even have a name, it’s a mountain location in North Scottsdale kind of off the freeway.
It was the perfect mix of cactus and big boulders and neutral tones which I wanted more of a neutral tone backdrop.
DONT’s of Getting Picture-Perfect Ready
Here are a few of the things I did NOT do at my engagement session which might shock a few of you. Listen, it all comes down to what you can justify. For example, instead of getting my makeup professionally done, I went and got my eyebrows microbladed instead.
ONE | Professional Hair and Makeup
As someone who can handle a full face of makeup and apply false lashes, I opted to do my hair and makeup.
However, I know that a lot of girls do not like doing their makeup for big events and love getting their makeup done. If this is you, then GO FOR IT!
TWO | Bring Our Dogs
As much as I love our dogs, we decided to keep the session about just us.
I’m not lying when I say that I bought our dogs white and black tuxedo bow ties for our engagement session. However, when we got closer to our session date, we opted to keep them at home.
We wanted to keep this session strictly about us.
Plus, we also would have had to bring someone to watch the dogs because in Arizona we couldn’t just let dogs roam free in the desert or keep them in the car because it was so hot that day.
THREE | Casual Outfits
We stuck with two dressy outfits for a polished and elegant look.
When I usually talk to my clients for engagements, I always recommend two different outfits – one dressy and one casual, well we did two dressy.
Since my fiance was already suited up in his black tie suit, he told me he didn’t want to change, so what I ended up doing was changing between two white dresses to change up my look a little bit.
It ended up being even better than I imagined.
Why is Styling Your Engagement Session Important?
I know not everyone takes engagement photos especially if they are having a destination wedding or they have a photo in mind already to use as save the dates.
But, HERE ME OUT!
As someone who is getting married themselves, you are only doing this once, and you don’t get that many times in your life to do a session like this so take full advantage!
Enjoy every moment of the wedding planning process and have fun doing it.
My Biggest Tip for Planning Your Engagement Session:
BE YOU! This is your time to shine, so wear what you love and pick a location that feels right for you and your fiancé. Tune out any unsolicited opinions and stick to your vision. Be authentic and embrace your unique love story!
Wedding planning is becoming real, and I can’t wait to see where my love story takes us! If you found this guide on how to style your engagement session helpful, stay tuned for my next blog post on how to plan a destination wedding in Italy.
Follow along my journey as we plan the wedding of our dreams!
