Nervous about engagement shoot...

That’s a shame you feel that way. I’m sure you are just being super critical of yourself and that the professional pic of you is not as bad as you think. But having said that do you really need the engagement shoot? We haven’t had one at all and it was offered for free but I never took him up on the offer as I don’t like pictures of myself much either and I don’t want loads of poses anyway- the photographers style is documentary and reportage as I don’t like posed pictures.
Don’t fee forced to have the engagement shoot if you don’t want it.

I'm not sure which stage you're at in your planning yet, but we did our 'engagement shoot' that our photographer offered on the same day as my hair and makeup trial, so I had all that done professionally and it also gave me the chance to see how it would photograph! We wore casual but nice clothes (if that makes sense?) I wore a dress and sandals and my fiancé wore dark jeans and a casual shirt. Our photographer also does less posed photos, but he taught us some simple poses to try, so I'm sure yours would do the same if you want their advice on poses. I was a but anxious as I'm not really used to having my photo taken but it was really fun and reassuring!

View quoted message

Because we don't live locally to our venue, we're having our engagement shoot done this summer while we're holiday down there anyway. I've heard the HMU trial idea before but I'm struggling to know when I'll be able to fit mine in!

Did you buy a dress specifically or go for something you already owned? How did you decide on one?

It's great to hear your photographer helped you so much - I'm hoping it will be fun and reassuring as I had been really looking forward to it.

View quoted message

Oh it's awful! I've compared it against other photos of me that FH or whoever has just taken of me - the professional one is definitely super unflattering!!

I generally do like photos of myself, which is why I'm freaking out after this professional one taken at another wedding, as I had been really looking forward to the engagement shoot

View quoted message We did exactly the same - we actually live abroad but having our wedding in the UK to make it easier for friends and family (particularly older relatives) to be able to attend, so we booked a week around Easter to visit our venue again, do trials and the photoshoot and meet with suppliers, as well as having a bit of holiday! It might be worth contacting your HMU team to see if they can possibly work around your shoot if you want to do that? Mine was able to book me into her studio in the morning and we had our photos in the afternoon, and both MUA and photographer were super chilled about timings. It helped me as well as I'm not a big makeup wearer and felt so self conscious with a full face of makeup on, but seeing how good it looked on camera will make me feel more comfortable on the day.
I wore a dress I already owned, I wanted something I was comfortable in so I went for one of my favourites and one that I could dress up or down - I'd brought a jacket and both trainers and sandals so I could style it differently according to the weather, and luckily it was warm and sunny!
Honestly I would say try to enjoy dressing up and having fun with your fiancé. Perhaps ask the photographer if they could show you a couple of photos on the camera screen after the first few photos if you are worried about how they will turn out? Then you can feel comfortable after seeing some gorgeous shots and relax during the shoot.

You can safely completely disregard the pro one that was sent. It was an informal candid one as you walked into the wedding totally unrepaired.

Its shots that I take all the time as I get informal candid unposed ones but its by its very nature that they may end up being not the best of a person. And that's the danger of an unposed documentary style and why I deliver a mix of shots.

This might help.

As I am going through my shots I may of thought "that's not a great one" but as its just a candid one not of the bride and groom or wedding party- and you being "just" a general guest I may not even have another shot of you to give the bride and groom and so rather than delete it, I let the bride have it and they can decide if they like it or not, its just a record.

But turns out the bride sent it to you and so no surprise that you do not like it.

As what to wear - ask your photographer.

I never can quite get how a photographer calls themselves a documentary / relaxed shooter but then wants you to have a pre shoot so you can practice posing !

In my experience it only takes seconds to help someone arrange themselves for a shot and once I have showed them a few results on the back of the camera they are natural and comfortable for the rest, without the need to practice before hand. A good portrait photographer will have a gift for making you feel relaxed.

Don't panic - our photographer sent us pretty much everything he took, and some of them were super-unflattering. It's just a shame that your friend sent you one of those pictures, but maybe she thinks it looked nice, or maybe it was the only non posed one she had of the pair of you.

We are probably the world's worst couple when it comes to hating being photographed, and neither of us are very photogenic, yet we got a good half dozen shots on our day that we really love. (And these are probably the only photographs in our lives that we don't hate!) So I am sure you will be fine.

Hey, I don't mind having my photos taken either and my now husband hates having his photo taken. However we did have some really nice shots from our engagement/pre wedding shoot and I think it really helped us knowing what to do for our wedding photos.

We had 2 locations/settings for ours - one that was kinda smart/formal and the other was quite casual/hipster. We didn't buy new clothes for this, so I wore a geometric shirt dress for the smart/formal in one of the large parks here and he wore shirt/chinos/braces and we both just wore tshirt and jeans for the casual/hipster. The smart/formal theme is more for "posey"/romantic feel and the casual/hipster is as it says ... very natural/casual etc.

Before our shoot, I had looked at pinterest and friends photoshoots for potential poses/shots that I wanted. To be fair, there were only a small number compared to our wedding one. During the engagement shoot/prewedding, there were some poses which we were not really keen on at all. But there were some which really came out well and we chose them for our gift table at the wedding! Our casual/hipster turned out best, because we liked the more natural/candid shots more.

Our photographers were really good with us though, they helped us set up poses/suggested ideas and were open to our ideas as well.

So I would suggest looking through pinternet/stalking friend's wedding/engagement shoots and seeing what shots you like, and then you can recreate them with your photographer. Also relax as well. My husband was quite emotionless at first but once he started to relax, he started to smile more and his face didn't look as tense haha!

Thanks everyone - you've made me feel a lot better about this!