Are engagement photos worth it?

I lovee our engagement photos, I look at them every day. We had two different sessions, one in San Diego and one in Chicago. It was a fun experience too. And it kind of prepares you for your wedding photos. We did some poses that didn't look good to us, so we know now not to pose like that on our wedding day lol

It's a fun experience and gets you used to posing for the camera. It's also a good opportunity to vibe with your photographer if they're also doing your wedding. We used our engagement photos for the STD and wedding website.

Worth it.


1. Takes a lot of stress out of wedding day if you’ve already gotten lots of good photos of just the 2 of you with the type of backdrops you like, especially if you can fit multiple locations in your engagement shoot. Honestly, weddings are hectic and a lot of the photographers’ time is also spent on shooting guests, venue, details, diff events on your wedding schedule. There’s not aa much time as you’d think to get good portraits or candids of the couple as you’d probably like.
2. Can use the engagement shoot to test if you like these photographers enough to use on your day of. Engagement shoots cost a lot less than wedding coverage, try before committing more money.
3. Alternative: book a day before/after in lieu of engagement shoot if you definitely want a bridal look or to look as if taken on day of.
For reference, we booked an engagement session with our day of photographers that will take place 4 months before our wedding day. None of the photographers I interviewed offered it in a package. It was always an add on service.

It was 100% worth it for us. Like other brides are saying, it allowed us to get familiar with our wedding photographer and get used to taking professional photos as we have never done them before. They turned out great and we are looking forward to choosing a few of them for our save-the-dates!

So worth it!! We have honestly used our engagement photo's for a lot of our wedding events and cute Instagram posts leading up to the wedding. Its nice to have "formal" pictures celebrating this special time before the wedding. We made a poster board for one of our Wedding Showers and had it at the entrance when people walked in, also used them for some picture frame decorations at our shower, and won a contest with one of our engagement photo's that basically paid for our honeymoon. I say if you our going to be engaged for 6+ months its worth it for save the dates or shower invites. If your wedding is closer you might not need to get engagement photo's. Hope this helps! and Congrats to you and your fiance!