Our E-Pic(nic)s

Last month, Tom and I had our engagement photos done by our wedding photographer, Brian of Ideal Impressions. We (well, I) choose to do a picnic-type theme shoot to match accordingly with our wedding. This was done not only for cohesiveness but also because we are planning to have booklet-type invitations where some of the pages will be photos of us! Our photographer had suggested the beach as we are by Lake Michigan and could get some really gorgeous shots but I just didn't feel that was us or matched our theme... plus it was a little cliche for my liking (as if picnic-theme shoots arent, ha I know right?!) So, we still went near Lake Michigan but to a park.

Meeting with our photographer was a wonderful experience. Right off the bat he explained to us how he works. The first picture he took was near perfect with the way he had the light cast off my hair. I packed three outfits for Tom and I; however we only got to two of them. No biggie. The pictures still turned out great with some planning on my part and our photographer's skills.

Packing props is a great way to maximize your photo shoot. I packed the following:

• a collection of inspirational photos so I didn't forget any ideas
  
• bright green apple -- to go with our bright outfits
• picnic blanket to lay on
• picnic basket
• mason jar & flowers
  
• bubbles (didn't get to use these, but what a fun idea!)
• and of course, the most important... our Save The Date papers! We wanted our Save The Dates to be a fun photo strip of us so I printed off on paper the words "SAVE" "THE" "DATE" "10/2/10" for us to hold up.

Are you ready to see how some of our photos turned out? I can't wait to show you..




This is my absolute favorite! I cannot wait to have this in our booklet invitations!


Do you spot our apple, flowers, and picnic blanket? :)



This one isn't picnic themed at all, but Tom loved these rocks and we couldn't pass up a photo opportunity...




Cute story about this picture above: When I was at home, I trimmed the flowers I bought and had exactly all of these stems left. They were the perfect size/amount to spell LOVE!

And here are our filmstrip Save The Date's from the shoot! Since our theme is shabby chic outdoors, we thought it would be really cute to do these in front of a tree so it was in the background.




The weather was extremely hot that day and the curls in my hair ended up falling out really quickly so we weren't exactly happy when we saw these. Of course, it's nothing that our amazing photographer did, it was just my hair and the weather obviously didn't cooperate.

Because of this, we opted to have a SECOND photo shoot-- but this time to save us the money we used Tom's cousin who does photography has a side hobby. We figured his skills were good enough to just re-shoot the Save The Date's for us so we didn't look so sloppy in something that would be going on 50 people's fridge for who knows how long!

Want to know how the second photo shoot turned out? Keep watching for the next post on it.

Did you have a distinct vision for your engagement shoot (inspiration photos, props, and a theme) or did you go with the flow?