You're engaged and have dived right in to wedding planning! You just booked your wedding photographer and are so excited for your wedding day to get here! Now that your wedding photographer is booked, it's time to start thinking about your engagement session. One question you may find yourself asking is when you should take your engagement portraits.
I always tell my couples that they will want to take their engagement portraits no later than five months before their wedding. This allows them plenty of time to use their engagement photos before their wedding because once you have your wedding photos, you won't utilize your engagement photos as much. The five to six month mark is also when a lot of couple send out their Save The Dates. If you are planning on using a photo from your engagement session on your Save The Date, then you will want your engagement session to happen before then.
Maybe your wedding is coming up fast and five months before has already passed, no worries! You can take your engagement portraits at any time! The five to six month mark just lets you be able to use them for your Save The Dates, wedding website, and things like that.
Now that you know when you should take your engagement portraits, let's chat about what time of day you should take your engagement portraits! This is a good thing to talk to your wedding photographer about because some photographers will operate differently on when they like to take portraits, however, most photographers will want to utilize golden hour for your session. Golden hour is the magic hour for portraits! This is when the sun is low enough in the sky where it creates some gorgeous soft and glowy light. This allows your images to have soft and even lighting and the diffused light will help you look your best! Golden hour occurs at sunrise and sunset. I always recommend that my couples start their engagement session either right at sunrise or 1.5-2 hours before sunset so we can capitalize on that pretty light!
Remember, when in doubt, always reach out to your wedding photographer and they will be able to steer you in the right direction but hopefully this will provide you with some insight!
