Weddingbee Blog

When we first booked our photographers, I knew I wanted us to have an engagement session. I know Mr. Ticket, and the odds of us having professional photos taken together after the wedding were pretty much zip. So this was a great opportunity to have some nice pictures of us that aren’t from the wedding!

So now it was just time to decide on wardrobe and location. Let’s start with location.

We figured we would most likely take pictures at the usual places—a park or the beach. They are standards for a reason: they produce pretty pictures! But while I was looking at other people’s engagement pictures for inspiration, I ran into these…

Image via Beautiful Day Photography

Image via Beautiful Day Photography

Image via Beautiful Day Photography

SOLD! After seeing these, there was no way I could settle for the beach or a park. You might not recognize the backdrop of these amazing photos but, having grown up a Disney child in Southern California, I sure did. These pictures were taken at Disneyland! (It’s the first place Mr. Ticket and I ever went together—we don’t call it our first date as both of our mothers decided to go the same day even though we spent 90% of the day apart.) I immediately starting researching the cost of tickets. That dream ended quickly. It was going to cost us $350 for our tickets as well as the photographers’ and parking just to get into Disneyland. Then there was the added complication of Disney’s vague photographer policy: “no professional looking cameras.”

But I LOVED the theme-park background and the funness of the pictures. I desperately wanted to capture that laid-back, fun atmosphere. Then it hit me…Knotts Berry Farm, another theme park Mr. Ticket and I had visited in our early dating days. It was significantly cheaper ($114 for all four of us and no parking fees since we went later in the day), and they had a much more relaxed photographer policy. I immediately emailed our photographers to see if they would be up for it. They agreed!

Next up was wardrobe. I had originally wanted to wear bright colors, but after seeing these pictures I fell in love with the girl’s dress. On a total whim, I attempted to contact Beautiful Day Photography through their blog site and see if anyone knew where she got the dress. They actually got back to me within a week! I was so stoked. They told me that she had gotten the dress at Windsor about two years ago and, while they didn’t still sell that dress, they had similar ones. So I decided to go on the hunt for a similar dress. Since my wedding dress isn’t white (more on that epicness later!), I really want to wear a white dress for the rehearsal dinner, and I figured maybe I could wear it for engagement photos, too!

I checked Windsor online and didn’t see any dresses I loved. So Mr. Ticket and I went to the mall one evening and headed for Macy’s first. I picked out three white dresses and hit the dressing rooms. I walked out to model each one for Mr. Ticket, and he picked the winner (which also happened to be my favorite), and he even bought it for me! Sorry I don’t have pictures of it from the store. But you will get to see it with our engagement-picture shots! I went to J.C. Penney the next day and picked out a shirt for Mr. Ticket. I called it the “wishful hope shirt” since it was a size smaller than he normally wears, but it fit him perfectly! I swear I didn’t pick his shirt to match the one from the pictures above—the one I picked was the only shirt they had that didn’t look exactly like ones he already owned.

Did you decide to go a more unique route with your engagement photos? Did your SO pick your outfit?