Engagement Photos

If you're looking for your engagement photos to be in the same seasonal theme as your wedding, then I would schedule the shoot for 11 or 12 months from the wedding. That way, if you're getting married in September 2025, you'll take your engagement photos in September 2024. You should probably wait until about December or January to actually send them, but you can have them done way ahead of time.

We are getting married May 30, 2020. We had our engagement photo shoot on May 12, 2019. I didn't really do that on purpose, because I wasn't concerned about the season so much, as we always have nice weather in California. But it worked out really well anyway!

How about two sets of photos? This way you can have some from fall and some from winter!

You can really do them whenever. We were trying to do ours around our wedding date the year prior but that didn't work out. We got engaged in 2017 and get married in June. Our pictures are set for Monday!

Hey Ruth!! Welcome to the WeddingWire community! It's so great to have you here!

Since your wedding is still quite a while away, you have plenty of time to make up your mind about exactly what style of photographs you want. Perhaps, since we are coming into fall now, you could ask a close friend or family member to do a trial run shoot in both seasons to find out what feels most natural and comfortable for you both.

The timelines on WeddingWire are suggested guides but of course, if it doesn't work for you, you have plenty of freedom to choose a time that does.

Do you think you will use your engagement photos for your STDs?

No, not at all, not for a September wedding. STDs generally go out 6-8 months before the wedding. So for you that would be January--March. Anytime in there would be fine to send them out. I would wait until after the holidays, as you are right, some of them could end up getting lost in the holiday rush of cards and packages.

But once you hit February, you should be good to go. I'd say to consider how many out of town and/or out of state guests you have. If you have a lot, then a little more time is a good idea, so I would send them end of January. If you don't really have a lot of out of town guests, wait until early March. You want people to have a heads up about the date, especially so they can plan travel, time off, etc. But you don't want them sent so early that your date gets forgotten about. "Oh, that's almost a year away, I'll think about it later" and then your STD gets buried on a desk, and forgotten about. But if it's only 6 or 7 months away, people are more likely to note it, and keep it in their brains somehow.

Oh my apologies Ruth! STDs stands for Save The Dates. You will come across that abbreviation quite a bit in the community!