What To Wear For Your Engagement Session

Your engagement session is coming up and you’re at a loss as to what to wear, or where to buy it. We love sending our brides a style guide that helps them prepare for their session and gives tips on what to wear, but this information is great for any type of session! So, whether you’re engaged or preparing for an anniversary session, we hope these 3 tips will help you! But first I’m going to share why we feel like these tips are helpful and why we wish we had known about it before!

Before getting into photography, Grant and I didn’t realize how drastically choosing an outfit for a photo session could change the overall look of that session. We didn’t have much time to prepare for our engagement session (as in, we had one week because we got married in 12 days!), so we wore jeans and nicer shirts. While I love our engagement photos, I wish we had made more of an effort to get dressed up for a few of them. Your engagement or anniversary session is a time of celebration so you should go all out on your outfits! It’s so worth it that Grant and I now always dress up for our anniversary sessions and I’m so happy we do!

Choose Two Outfits

Two outfits gives you the chance to choose a more causal outfit that is relaxed and fun, but then change to a dressier outfit that is more like you’re going on a nice date or to a formal party. So for causal you might wear your favorite jeans and a nice shirt, or  a summer dress that you might wear to the beach. Then your dressier outfit could be a fitted short dress with heels, or a long flowy dress that is more formal. For guys, this could mean they wear slacks with a button down and a tie or even a full suit. Having two outfit options gives variety in your photos that most couples love! Also, a few of my favorite places to buy outfits are Lulus and Morning Lavender, so check them out to give you some great options for what to wear! 🙂

Choosing Your Colors

Pastels and neutrals always tend to photograph the best and really makes for a light, airy style of photo. But we’ve also photographed couples in darker colors and we love the pop and contrast that it gives. So, think of what you would like best and go with that! These photos will be yours forever and you want to love them! And as far as coordinating your outfits, think of accenting with colors that the other is wearing. For instance, if the girl is wearing a blue dress, the guy could wear a white shirt with a blue tie. That way you’re never matching, but your outfits go together.

Flattering Your Body

This is one more for the women. You should always choose something that makes you feel beautiful and flatters you well! As women, we tend to be self conscious about our bodies, no matter our size, so be aware of that and choose your outfit accordingly. For most women, skinny straps or anything strapless can tend to make your arms look bigger on camera. So if you’re already self-conscious about your arms, this is something to think about. And after having worn jeans in our engagement session, I have to say I feel way more beautiful wearing a dress and it flatters me way better as well! This is why I rarely will ever wear jeans for a session….maybe I just haven’t found that perfect pair though. 😉

So there are just a few tips to keep in mind as you plan for your session! This is just a small piece of what our couples get when we send them a detailed styled guide, so if you’re interested in booking a session, you’ll get several more pages on styling your engagement session and what to expect!

For now though, enjoy a few couples who chose to dress up for their engagement session! 🙂