A few weeks before our wedding, we had our 'pre-wedding photo shoot' (also known as an engagement shoot) with our photographer (Adam - AHP Photography) who we'd booked for our wedding day. If you aren't familiar with these, they are basically a chance for you to;
1. meet your photographer and get a feel for how they like to work, and;
2. experience and get comfortable with having your picture taken (if you aren't already).
We had the option to choose the location of the photo shoot - we chose our wedding venue as it has lots of big open gardens and lots of pretty spots to get some great photos. It was really beneficial to explore the venue and grounds with Adam, our photographer, as we were able to pick out the best spots and angles for our wedding photographs as well as the engagement shoot. We saved the best spots for the wedding day, so none of the photos would be too similar.
We both didn't really know what to expect from the shoot to be honest - we just both knew it would be a sensible idea to do it, and actually, it was part of our wedding photography package anyway so it would be rude not to! I'm not going to lie, when we started having our picture taken, we felt very awkward and so unnatural! It felt like such an odd situation to be in... Let's face it, it's not something that happens everyday!
Adam would take a few snaps, show us, suggest a slightly different poses, take another photo and show us the difference, it was such a learning curve. After a short while we both started to feel a lot more comfortable and reassured that we didn't look as awkward as we felt! He gave us a few tips to remember while being photographed too - things that might feel a bit unnatural in real life, but when photographed, look amazing. That was a really big help.
A week or so later we were sent a link to all the photos that we taken. We managed to get some really lovely photographs from the day, and we were definitely more relaxed and prepared to be photographed on our wedding day after that. I'd definitely recommend engaged couples to do this if you get the chance, you won't regret it! x
