Weddingbee Blog

As soon as Mr. Wallaby and I booked our photographers, I started counting down the days until our engagement session. Meeting them was such a tease—I couldn’t wait to hang out with them some more! However, the waiting period gave me some time to look for inspiration for the shoot. We were given the opportunity to take pictures in three locations, and we could have unlimited outfit changes, so this required some planning in advance.

I turned to Pinterest and several wedding blogs for engagement session inspiration. At first I focused on cute poses couples struck for the camera, and I thought about writing down a list of “must-have” shots to give to Kat and Rachel. But then I stumbled across photos of a beautiful engagement session in a persimmon orchard, and I started to think more about where we should capture our pictures.

Photo by This Modern Romance via Green Wedding Shoes.

Before we signed the contract with Mustard Seed Photography, Mr. W and I decided that we wanted to do an engagement session outdoors. We both love nature and being outside, and I think outdoor engagement sessions can be more timeless than pictures with city-scapes (which can look dated later down the road). Kat and Rachel’s major stylistic strength is photographing portraits outdoors, and that was a big factor that influenced our decision to book them.

I began stressing about where to take our engagement pictures…Houston is a huge metropolitan area, and the surrounding area is also full of beautiful landscapes for photoshoots! Luckily, though, Kat emailed me a list of locations where she and Rachel have done past engagement sessions. Mr. W and I ended up choosing our locations from that list.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our engagement session:

This was the teaser that Kat and Rachel posted that afternoon:

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

That was from our first location, in a field that is actually right off the side of the freeway! We got a lot of honks from drivers who saw what we were up to!

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

After taking dozens of dreamy pictures in the field, we moved on to our next shooting location, right down the street, where we set up a picnic under a big, gnarly tree. I changed into a short ruffly blue dress. In retrospect, I wish I had made a different wardrobe choice for these pictures—in several of the pictures, my bra straps are showing, and I kept having to pull the dress up to hide my chest.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

We frolicked in the field for half an hour, and then we hopped back in Kat’s Subaru and drove to our final location: a basketball court. Mr. Wallaby is ob-sessed with basketball, and he wanted to take some pictures of us messing around on a court. These are his favorite pictures from the day.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

Photo by Mustard Seed Photography.

All in all, we were very pleased with how our engagement pictures turned out. Mr. W and I are going to frame several of them to hang from our “wedding wall” setup at the ceremony—more on that later. And we have had no shame printing out Moo cards with the pictures (which were used to include our wedding website with the save-the-dates), posting the pictures on Facebook and on our wedding website, and maybe changing the backgrounds of our phones And most of all, we can’t wait until the wedding when we get to work with these hilarious, fun, talented photographers a second time!

Did you have a formal engagement session? What inspired your props and outfits for your engagement shoot?