I’m such a flop. It’s Thursday and I promised an article yesterday. I’m sorry, dear friends. 😦

When we were planning our wedding in 2014, engagement photos were on the rise. EVERY ENGAGED COUPLE seemed to be doing them. I never understood why. What was the purpose of these pictures? Why were they deemed necessary? Why did they look so fake?

I couldn’t imagine us longingly staring into the horizon, conveniently situated in a field of tall grass. Or looking deeply into each other’s eyes with a historic train or brick wall in the background. Or gallivanting across the city, hand in hand. The idea was very strange to me. And it was far from the real “us.”

But meh, we had an engagement shoot, anyway.

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While I was half-convinced that I didn’t want to have one, my then-fiancé simply didn’t care. “Why can’t we just go to High Park and set up our tripod?” he suggested. (I had a feeling it would be a fail.)

The main reason why we had the photo shoot was that it was already included in the photography package gifted to us by my mother-in-law. I knew it would be a good opportunity to get to know our photographer.

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Looking into the horizon – check

Reason number two was that we could practice getting comfortable for our wedding pictures. (Surprisingly, my husband wasn’t as awkward as I expected!)

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We could also get some professional photos out of it for our save-the-dates (another wedding planning phenomenon I didn’t understand) and wedding website. It was great to get recent pictures of us for relatives whom we hadn’t seen in a long time and didn’t have social media.

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I don’t know why the green is coming out more neon-y than it should. It should be a light, mint green

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What’s more is that I had a sweet Facebook profile picture for months. LOL.

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The only “theme” I had in mind was “outdoorsy fun” because my husband and I love hiking and camping. That explains the hammock, picnic blanket, and natural surroundings (trees, a field, a ravine… the whole bit). I even brought an old-timey lamp but it didn’t make it to the photos. Haha.

The whole session lasted about three hours on a Saturday morning in July. At times, our photographer would pull out her phone to show us ideas for poses. I remember being so amazed by her preparedness.

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I know they’re such a cliché. I know they look dumb, staged, and pretty generic. But it was practically for FREE and we had a lot of fun doing it! We also look awesome. Hehe. We surely wouldn’t have done them if we had to pay $300 (the going rate at the time) for the photo shoot.

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Walking hand in hand – check

My practical advice? Don’t do an engagement photo shoot if you have to pay extra for it. I look at the pictures now and while they’re adorable, I don’t have much of a use for them. I guess I can use them to remember how we were once so young, beautiful, and in love many decades from now, but that’s about it. Spend your hard-earned wedding planning money elsewhere.

Photographer: Carrie Scherkus

Location: Lions Valley Park, Oakville, Ontario, Canada