question recently and it’s definitely catered towards brides. So Naturally, this needs to be a Wedding Wednesday post!!  As I continue to shoot and grow as a photographer AND business woman, I have realized more and more that the process of creating GREAT wedding images doesn’t start with the bride and the bridesmaids in the bridal suite the morning of the wedding… it starts with the FIRST email the bride sends me.  This “Wedding Experience” is a process and the wedding day is just one part of the journey.  In order to have GENUINE, natural images of my couples on their wedding day, I NEED for them to have a GREAT experience and that’s where  an engagement session comes into play. Sure, there are some cases where we meet on the wedding day because it was a destination wedding and we just couldn’t make an eshoot work before the big day but those are rare. I’ve already done a post about the importance of an engagement session… you can read that HERE!   Today I just simply want to emphasize that engagements should be done with your WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER. Except for VERY FEW exceptions, I don’t take engagements outside of a wedding package and there are several reasons for this:

1.  My free dates for engagement sessions need to be saved for MY wedding clients.  KJ brides take priority when it comes to the calendar and when I’m shooting 30+ weddings a year, that means I have to find time to shoot 30+ engagements. I want to make sure I balance LIFE and WORK and also save my availability for my clients who have invested in having me be a part of their big day.

2. By shooting JUST engagement sessions for couples, I’m actually taking away a VERY valuable session from another photographer.  I think every couple needs that time with their actual wedding photographer.  The engagement session is their trial run! It’s their time to really get to know the artist that will be capturing their wedding day and that’s a vital part of the process! When I show up to weddings, I feel like I’m meeting a FRIEND….. and if a photographer misses out on that feeling because I took their client’s engagement portraits, it’s just not fair. So I ALWAYS encourage brides to connect with THEIR wedding photographer for their engagement portraits if at all possible!

3. STYLE! I think photographers all have a different “look” to their images. I personally LOVE having engagement portraits to display in my house that are the same style as my wedding portraits. There’s a neat consistency in all of our images from Jstar and I love that!!

So basically, I’m a jealous photog…. and I think most photographers are too.  I want my wedding couples to be exclusively mine… and that’s not because I’m a jerk!…. It’s because I KNOW that will make for a much smoother experience overall and I want the BEST for my couples! Here are a few examples of my 2013 couples getting comfortable in front of the camera and practicing for their big day!!!