Our Engagement Photos

One of the many reasons that we were thrilled to hire Ashley as our wedding photographer was that each of her wedding day photo packages comes with a complimentary engagement session. While I'm not sure that I would have paid extra for an engagement session, I am beyond happy that we got to have one. Like many people (with the exception of models maybe), the Architect and I are not super comfortable hanging out in front of a camera. The last time that either of us had any sort of formal photos taken of us was back in middle school for those silly school portraits with the pink and blue lasers in the background.

Remember these?! Any children of the 80s out there?
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We were a little nervous when we showed up for our engagement session, but we were thrilled to have some time to get comfortable with Ashley and her shooting style, before the main(e) event this summer. We quickly learned that the Architect was something of a natural in front of the camera, while I needed a little time to figure out how to act natural. (Hints from Ashley: Put your weight in one of your legs rather than standing stiff and straight. Also, do something with your hands rather than leaving them dangling loose at your sides.)

For our engagement photos we wanted to choose a backdrop that was a complete and total contrast to how our wedding photos would look. While our wedding will be formal, rural, lush, green, and will take place during the summer, we chose our engagement photo shoot to be informal, urban, stark, gray, and it took place during the winter. We ended up taking our photos in a fairly industrial section of downtown Boston, on a cold winter day. I think the temperature was hovering around 20 degrees. Having just flown across the country from sunny California, this was definitely a bit of a shock, but we managed. Here are some of the photos from our session:

All of these photos are from the uber-talented Ashley O'Dell. Most are on her blog.

Words cannot express how much I love these photos. They are artistic, and timeless, and I know that we will look back on these years from now and treasure them. Looking back at Ashley's other past engagement shoots, they are all really different from one another, and I love how she totally managed to capture "us" in these photos.

So how about you? Did you do an engagement session? Were you happy with that decision?