“What should we wear to our engagement session?”
This is by far the most common email I get from my brides immediately after booking me to photograph their wedding, regardless of how stylish they are. Every single time, I respond with the same four guidelines, and today I’ve decided to pass on the wisdom! These four things have time and time again proven to make my couples look and feel great in person, but also ensure that their photographs are beautiful and timeless.
1 — Clothes with movement
Photography, for me, is all about telling a story through imagery and capturing my couples authentically. Since most of my couples aren’t professional models, this normally comes down to giving you simple actions to perform during your session like “hold hands and walk in that direction, looking at each other as much as possible.” These little actions not only make my couples way more comfortable and takes the focus off of “oh my gosh what do I do with my hands?” but it also results in a lot of beautiful natural movement — with the help of that classic Ontario open field wind!
When planning out an engagement session outfit, I always like to recommend my brides to consider how their outfit will flow during the session. Guys, there is a reason that so many stunning engagement sessions on your favourite wedding blogs feature women in gorgeous maxi dresses blowing in the wind. Emphasizing natural movements using fabrics that move immediately amps up the romance factor.
**Bonus note: pay special attention to how your outfit will flow and what it will emphasize. Dresses that have more structure around your chest in order to define a waistline and flow downwards, tend to photograph much better than looser, shapeless designs. If you’re stuck, try to visualize how your outfit will look if you place a fan directly in front or behind you: do you still have a defined waist? You’re good.
2 — Neutrals, pastels, and earth tones
Guys, let’s have a serious chat here right now about something that brings me daily headaches. It’s called a colour cast. To put it simply, colour casts occur when an bright colour is placed next to another object, and that bright colour reflects itself on to that object.
I see this a lot in photographs when a groom-to-be is a bit taller than his fiancée and decides to wear a bright, primary colour (like a vibrant red). When I put these couples into a pose where they are close together, the bride-to-be’s face ends up incredibly close to his shirt, which immediately reflects the colour red on to her skin and chest.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good bright red dress, but I tend to recommend that the guys stick to pastels, earth tones, and neutrals, and the ladies stick to bright colours only if the neckline isn’t a super high cut. This just makes sure your skin tones stay as they are and don’t shift in small areas like the underside of your chin or one side of your face due to your outfits.
3 — Complimentary colours
When I was in high school, I distinctly remember going into a huge argument with my mom about her making us wear matching black t-shirts and blue jeans to a family portrait session. My thoughts on this have stayed the exact same throughout the last decade — matching outfits are boring, and outdated.
Wearing colours that compliment each other instead of wearing the same tones allows the eye to separate two subjects and create a focal point. Try to picture you and your fiancé hugging while both wearing white long sleeved sweaters. When you’re embracing in this kind of a pose, it becomes difficult to differentiate which arm is yours and which is his, and all of the white areas become really overwhelming to the eye since there is so much of the same colour information in one isolated area. When you have one person in a different tone, it immediately separates the two of you and makes the image easier to read.
Beyond the technical mumbo jumbo, it just straight up looks nicer when you are dressed in colours that compliment each other opposed to being fully matched. This is where pastels, neutrals, and earth tones come in to play again; these colours match with essentially anything, so finding one good outfit for either you or your future husband in one of these tones allows for the other to rock anything they please!
4 — Make sure that comfort is your top priority
No, I do not mean that you should wear yoga pants. This last one is a little vague because it means a lot of different things to different people. Essentially, what you wear to your engagement session should make you feel your absolute best. When you wear an outfit that you aren’t entirely comfortable in, whether it is because it is too formal for you and you would never actually wear it, it is showing off body parts you don’t want emphasized, or you just don’t feel 100% like a rockstar in it, it will show in your photographs how uncomfortable you are. Don’t wear anything that doesn’t make you look and feel your absolute best.
