I never had any engagement-photo inspirations really, mainly because I thought we weren’t going to have any. We nixed the idea of doing engagement pictures very early in the process since it seemed unnecessary and, frankly, it wasn’t in the budget.
Thus, when a friend of my parents offered to take engagement pictures for us while we were visiting for Christmas break, I was very, very thankful for the opportunity to get some nice shots of us.
However, I really had no idea where to start looking for inspiration, what to wear, or even what type of pictures we wanted. I never thought I would be taking engagement pictures in the dead of winter. Many of the really beautiful engagement pictures that I had pinned involve frolicking in a large field, like Miss Camel’s and Miss Otter’s gorgeous engagement pictures. Winter was never really part of my equation—I’m a complete and total wuss when it comes to being outside in the cold. That being said, there are a lot of very gorgeous winter engagement sessions.
Photo by: Canary Grey Photography on Grey Likes Weddings via Lover.ly
Once upon a time, a spreadsheet was created. And on that spreadsheet was a list of every single thing I could possibly ever imagine that I could hand over money for.
There were the big things, like the venue, photographer, and food, but then there were other things that were related to it, like spray-tan trials, postage stamps, and bathroom baskets.
This list was the key to how I got the budget sorted.
Now—I read up about the budget, and the biggest thing that was shouted from the rooftops was “Set your budget first, THEN draw up your spending allocations.” But I tend to do things my own way, so I thought I’d do it a little differently.
Step one: Get that huge list into a spreadsheet.
Step two: Do some mighty research. (I found general prices on local websites, called up a few places for quotes, and sent out a few emails.)
Step three: Add quotes to budget spreadsheet.
Step four: Look at the total and cry a bit because you never really dreamt that it would really cost that much.
