Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Photos

(We used this photo for our Save the Dates)

On my first wedding recap post I said I would share my engagement pictures next. Then I forgot the promise and the order of events and went straight to the engagement party. Two steps forward, one step back. Such is life.

Anyway, Sean and I love to travel. Italy was high on our list of places to experience together. We spent close to a year dreaming up and planning our Italy trip. The timing worked out (thanks Sean!) that we were newly engaged, excited and in love, yet still naive and blissful about the wedding planning process. I loved the idea of capturing this special time in our lives and having unique engagement photos to document the trip.

I started researching Italian photographers, spending time on Style Me Pretty's Little Black Book of International wedding vendors and before long I had narrowed down my search. Since we were traveling around quite a bit, the logistics needed to be perfect. Of the places we were traveling, we decided somewhere in Tuscany would be best. Florence was too crowded of a city, yet I didn't want vineyard pictures that could have been taken in California. I found a photographer whose work I liked and was based right outside of Siena. A few weeks of emailing later and the date was set.

In my humble opinion, we could not have picked a better location. Siena is easily one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The architecture is incredible, the streets are charming and while the city is very much alive and active it was never crowded. Our photographer, Andrea Corsi, was apparently very excited to shoot an “American couple.” He recruited two other photographers who wanted to build their portfolios to photograph us (at no additional cost). When three Italians arrived at our hotel, we were a little overwhelmed. We quickly chugged a beer and the  five of us set off to explore Siena on foot and “follow the light.”  I would never attempt to recreate the situation because we could simply never top it. Their English was mediocre (at best) but they led us to different locations and told us to kiss (over and over again) and before we knew it the sun was setting and we had three new friends. It was great learning experience as Sean and I were not used to being in front of the camera for hours on end. It helped me realize what I value in a photographer and see the facial expressions I make in photos that I didn't want to replicate on my wedding.

The Italian photographers were “photojournalistic” in style. They told us to not look at the camera and were very against any posed photographs. I get it. Poses can be cheesy and fake. However, on my wedding day you better believe I wanted some posed photos. I wanted a photographer assertive enough to tell Sean to button his jacket and how to angle my head. The Italians were not that way, but the experience allowed me to the pick the perfect (for us) wedding photographer upon our return. 

A downside to taking “destination” engagement pictures is that we were never photographed by our wedding photographer until our wedding day. Nowadays many photographers recommend (or include) an engagement session so that you get to know each other before hand. I love this idea, however the photographer I selected did not include an e-session in our package, and it fell in to the nice in theory but not necessary camp which those of you have planned a wedding knows typically doesn't get done. And realistically, how many photos can you really display of yourself?

A few points that are coming back to me while looking at these pictures:

-Photographers take a LOT of pictures. You are most likely going to dislike the way you look in 90% of them. The goal is to have enough to choose from so that you end up with a few you do like. From our engagement session (over 1,000 pictures) I needed one great photo to use for our Save the Date. It can be traumatizing  discouraging looking through 900 bad photos of yourself. Try not to let it bother you. You only need a couple "frame worthy" shots.

-My American sensibilities were challenged by these passionate Europeans. Sean and I are decently affectionate but tend to shy away from PDA. Kissing in public is just flat out awkward. Also, the number of "up the dress" shots they took is borderline crazy. All I can do is pray I'm not on some weird Italian p*rn site.

-Be sure to get the high resolution images AND a contract where the photographer gives you the right to re-print. I had to show the contract while having images printed at Costco.

All of this to say, here are our engagement pictures. 

Siena, Italy. May 2011.