Should You Take Engagement Photos?

When we were living in New York, Pete and I went to Wave Hill , a gorgeous park close to his house. We walked around the gardens, through the woods, looked at the bridge and the river, and at the end, we both said this is where we'd take our engagement photos.

That was just wishful thinking at that point because we weren't engaged then. 

We did get engaged (obviously), but we ended up not taking our engagement photos in Wave Hill because we moved to North Carolina before he proposed. We did take them at a beach close to our home in North Carolina.

But they question remains: Should you take engagement photos?

My friend Mallory, who got married in July 2012, got hers done too, and I borrowed some of hers for this post.

Should You Take Engagement Photos? 

The Pros For Taking Engagement Photos:
Engagement photos are a really nice way to capture how you look at the time of your engagement. In ten, twenty, fifty years, it will be so sweet to look back and see how in love and how young you were. Pictures are a great way to capture a moment and for that, I'm always for them.

And there are a lot of fun engagement photo ideas out there now: from a beach to a park to just showing your personalities. So it could actually just be a fun day to spend together.

Even better, taking engagement photos is a good excuse to test out your photographer. It also helps you get comfortable with them, which could do wonders for you being comfortable around them on your wedding day.

Reasons For Not Doing Engagement Photos:
If you take engagement photos, you can then use them for your Save the Date cards. But, realistically, you use one photo for the save the date and that's it. So to spend about a hundred bucks on one photo, that's silly to me, especially if you're planning your wedding on a strict budget.

So, if it doesn't fit into your budget, you should skip them. Or, do what we did. To save, we actually ended up taking them with a new photographer who was looking for photos for her portfolio. She didn't charge us, but we did tip her because I didn't feel right not giving her any money for her time.

We ended up using just one photo from the shoot for our save the dates and on a canvas print to hang in our bedroom. Other than that, I'm not sure what engagement photos are for, to be honest. I made wedding confetti out of a few of them, just to get more use out of our photos. You could put together our DIY photo banner with them. But other than that, you're just pushing it.

When Should You Take Engagement Photos?
There's no strict timeline for when to take engagement photos. We took ours seven months after we got engaged, mostly because we didn't want it to be freezing cold on the beach when we took our photos. That was 14 months before our wedding.

You just want to make sure you take your photos after you get engaged, but before you need them. If you are planning on using them for your save the dates (which you mail out a year beforehand for a destination wedding and six months before a local wedding), use that as a factor for when you should take them. Also, double check the photographer's turn around time before booking them because you don't want to wait three months for these, like you can wait for your wedding photos.

Do You Need To Take Engagement Photos?
You don't need to do anything.

We took a selfie the day we got engaged, and that's what I used for our engagement party invites. Good enough for me.


And, if you did take your photos already, you're in luck. Right now, you can get a free 8x10 at Walgreens. You can upload a photo, add it to your cart, and enter the code EIGHT10 at checkout. Choose in store pickup and your photo will be completely free. The code is valid through today, November 18, 2019, so don't miss it.

BRIDAL BABBLE: Did you get engagement photos professionally taken?

Need help with your engagement photos?

Check out our Engagement Picture Tips post.