Working with the Engagement Photographer

Today was the day we picked up our engagement photographs. 

No wait, don’t press back, you didn’t miss a post.  We weren’t ACTUALLY engaged yet.  Not when first went to the engagement photographer, and not even by the time the engagement pictures were ready.  So okay, if you don’t want to think of them as actual engagement photographs then don’t, but I do.  Since Adam and I only see each other twice per year, we just have to cram a whole lot into a few weeks time.  So if it means overlapping the engagement pictures wait time and the ring wait time and going a little out of order, so be it.  After all, the engagement photographer did a great job.  And since my left hand was not visible in any of them, my lack of ring was inconspicuous. 

Like everything, we’d planned on getting these photographs done for months.  His mom and her partner got them done with an award winning engagement photographer, and Adam was so taken with them that he wanted to get some of us.  I bought a dress for the occasion (that’s a lie.  I bought 4.  Returned 2 and kept a spare).  I tried them on for Adam on webcam for help choosing, agonized over whether to go with red or purple until the day I packed for my visit, and searched high and low for a black shawl to coordinate with my shoes.  The night before we went to the engagement photographer I got ready for bed early so I would look refreshed, said goodnight to Adam and he said “I should probably figure out what I’m going to wear.”

Men.

When we went for the photo shoot Adam had warned me the engagement photographer was weird.  I didn’t think he was so bad.  He listened to what we wanted (head shots, ¾ shots, and full length shots) and added a few classic engagement photo poses we wouldn’t have thought of.  Some worked, some failed.  I was uncomfortable with the kneeling ones and it showed.  But since he took so many, when we went back a few days later and viewed them on the slide show he made for us, as we sat in front of the projection screen, we were able to narrow them down to 4 good ones. 

The tricky thing was deciding on the sizes to print our photographs.  We wanted them large enough to enjoy hanging on the wall, but small enough to fit in my suitcases.  The engagement photographer had the rectangles printed on a large sheet of paper to help us visualize them.  So the next issue was the fact that some were landscape and some were portrait.  He offered to make the matte taller on the landscape one so that all the frames were the same size but I quickly rejected that idea.  I knew that would stick out like a sore thumb, and I knew that each photo should stand on its own, not as part of a group.  He told me that’s smart, but some people just don’t see it that way.

A couple weeks later our engagement photographs were printed and we were able to pick out the frames, though this was sort of a waste of a trip.  Adam knew exactly which frames he wanted even before we took the photos.   They were pretty much my style too, so we reiterated that those were what we liked when he held them up to the photos, Adam asked for cream mattes with a gold border, and then it was just a matter of more waiting. 

It happened that we got the call that the photographs were ready within an hour of the call that the ring was ready yesterday.  So we picked them up, and they looked great.  His mom squealed in delight when she saw our engagement photographs.  I made Adam pick his favorite first, then I picked, them him, then me last.  Even though as he said, it doesn’t matter who gets what; eventually all 4 of our engagement pictures will be together.