Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

Mod­ern cou­ples are now em­brac­ing the idea of hav­ing an en­gage­ment shoot pri­or to the wed­ding. And why not? It's a prime op­por­tu­ni­ty to show off your per­son­al­i­ty as a cou­ple, get cre­ative on a pho­to shoot and do some­thing out­side of the nor­mal rou­tine. Many pho­tog­ra­phers now al­so in­clude an en­gage­ment shoot as part of their stan­dard wed­ding pack­age.

An en­gage­ment shoot en­ables you to de­vel­op a rap­port with your pho­tog­ra­ph­er pre-wed­ding. Cou­ples who are cam­era-shy can al­so get more com­fort­able be­ing in front of the cam­era and can be­come more con­fi­dent when fol­low­ing the pho­tog­ra­ph­er's di­rec­tions and cues. Here are some key things to keep in mind when plan­ning your shoot:

Sched­ul­ing

Some brides may pre­fer to sched­ule the en­gage­ment shoot on the same day they get their make­up tri­al done. This way, brides ac­tu­al­ly get to see how well their make­up lasts dur­ing the day and whether the ef­fect is nat­ur­al or dra­mat­ic enough for them.

You can de­cide whether you would like to do your shoot on a week­day or week­end. Bear in mind that many pub­lic spaces-parks, beach­es, wa­ter­fronts, botan­i­cal gar­dens etc, tend to get crowd­ed on week­ends. There­fore, if you would rather avoid on­look­ers, a qui­eter week­day shoot may be best.

Venue

En­gage­ment shoots are not usu­al­ly done in stu­dio; most are done off-site or on lo­ca­tion. Your choice of lo­ca­tion can be as sim­ple as hav­ing it at home, if that's where you're most com­fort­able. How­ev­er, if you would like to be more ad­ven­tur­ous, your shoot is an ide­al time to se­lect a lo­ca­tion that re­flects your in­ter­ests.

For ex­am­ple, if you are a sports fan, you can choose to shoot in a sta­di­um or play­ing field, or if you love to dine out, you can do your shoot al fres­co, at your favourite restau­rant or caf&ea­cute;. Many cou­ples choose lo­ca­tions that are off-the-beat­en path such as on a rooftop, on a bridge or near to mon­u­ments or places of ar­chi­tec­tur­al in­ter­est.

Styling your shoot

It is best to wear cloth­ing you're most com­fort­able in for your shoot. If your style is more ca­su­al, try not to turn in­to some­one un­recog­nis­able in a cock­tail dress and stilet­tos on your shoot! The best op­tion is to stay true to your style and cloth­ing pref­er­ences.

Try to avoid cloth­ing that will be­come see-through in the sun­light or cloth­ing that will show per­spi­ra­tion stains, if you're do­ing an out­door shoot. You may al­so want to se­lect props for your shoot-many cou­ples choose to use para­sols, bal­loons, cars, bi­cy­cles or beach balls to in­ject more per­son­al­i­ty and in­ter­est dur­ing their shoot.