Your engagement session can be one of the most exciting parts about being engaged! We’re here to celebrate with you and truly soak in all of the good vibes that come with getting engaged! But… both of us grew up here in Minnesota and we know how the winter loves to stick around for longer than any of us want it to! So don’t let a little snow on the ground and subzero temperatures get you down! We’ve got your Ultimate Guide to Winter Engagement Sessions to answer all your questions!

Dress for the Occasion: What Should I Wear to My Winter Engagement Session?

Now, we know more than anyone that the most stressful part of any engagement session has to be picking out an outfit! Do we wear the same color? Should we were opposites? Do I go with more neutral colors or bold colors? Should I let my future spouse to wear a hat? The questions are endless and we know how it can feel all-consuming!

Annnnnndddd not to be a Debbie-downer but having your engagement session in the winter can add a lot more questions into the mix! What if I don’t wear something warm enough? How do I mix practicality with fashion? Do I wear a winter jacket for my session? Trust us! We know how all these questions can come racing through your head! We’re here to help ease you through all these anxieties!

First and foremost, we recommend dressing in layers for your winter engagement session! The weather can be unpredictable, especially in Minnesota! One day, we could have a beautiful winter wonderland with the perfect temperature and the next we could be blessed with the frigid cold where we all leave with no feeling in our toes and finally we could have the warm weather with everything melting into a big, ol’ muddy mess! Regardless, be prepared for the occasion with layers so you can shed ’em off or keep ’em on!

You can totally wear a winter jacket for some of your engagement photos! If you do, we recommend wearing a winter jacket with more of a neutral color, avoiding bright colors like blue or red. Additionally, steer away from a winter jacket that has any large logos or print on them. Those little elements can really pop out in your photos and be a little distracting!

Don’t be afraid to bring out some of that other winter gear for your engagement session! We’re not talking snow pants and snow boots! We’re talking hats, mittens, scarves, and all of those other little touches! Just because we are shooting your engagement photos doesn’t mean you have to dress like its 80 degrees! Dress like you’re going on a winter walk with the love of your life! Sometimes the aesthetics that can come from a winter session trump what you can get from a spring/summer engagement session! Now, we’re not saying that you can’t wear a nice dress or go all ritzy! You can bring multiple outfits along and we’ll have nice fuzzy blanket with that you can wrap up in between shots!

As your engagement photographers, we are also your personal coat hangers! You can throw all your bags, coats, and quite literally anything and we’ll take it from there. We can run back and forth from the warm car too! Trust us… we’ll make *almost* any outfit work for your winter engagement session!

Location, Location, Location: Where Should I Have My Engagement Session?

Now when it comes to locations for your winter engagement session, we have quite a few ideas! We know it can be a little bit of a headache to think of a location that will really bring that winter wonderland to life and fully embrace the winter landscape so we’ve compiled a list here to help!

Our personal favorite location for a winter engagement is somewhere with tall pines! These tall pines can be found pretty much anywhere in the Midwest! You can find a state park or a local park and we can hit the trails to bring that winter wonderland to life! These tall pines provide great backdrops and really make for some moody, wintery shots!

But the fun doesn’t have to stop there! Let’s find a frozen waterfall and go on an adventure! Just in Minnesota, there are plenty of frozen waterfalls that we can take a day trip out to! Let’s go out on a frozen lake and go ice skating! There’s so much opportunity with the ice! And oddly enough, ice is a really great complement in photos!

Another place that we find makes for a really great engagement session are Christmas tree farms! Now, we know what you might be thinking, “I don’t want my engagement photos to look like a Christmas card!” But there are plenty of ways that we can make your engagement photos not look like they’re straight from a Christmas card. We gotchu! Don’t let that fear keep you from having a great engagement session at a Christmas tree farm!

If you should know anything about our engagement sessions, it’s that we encourage you to make your engagement session into a date night! We want you to do something you love, something you’re familiar with! You are most yourself when you are in your element so it makes it a little bit less awkward when we shove a camera in your face!

But don’t worry! We’ve got a few date ideas that you can use for YOUR winter engagement session! First, you can go on a little adventure through a Christmas light display! Who doesn’t love some good Christmas lights?! That doesn’t mean your engagement photos are going to turn out all Christmasey and you won’t be able to use them outside of that! We’ll make sure there’s some variety in your gallery that can be used in ANY season.

Another date idea would be anything involved with winter outdoor activities! Let’s go to a ski lodge and hit the slopes! We love snowboarding so we’ll be right there with you on the slopes! Gnarly dude! We’ll head inside and sip some hot chocolate while you two cozy up for some awesome engagement pictures! Do you and your fiancé love ice fishing? Bring us along! We love trying new things and hearing about what YOU’RE passionate about!

So maybe after all of that, you’re still sitting there thinking to yourself, “I’m just TOO MUCH of a freeze baby! I can’t do that!” Don’t fret! There are plenty of ways to keep that winter vibe but stay indoors! We can make an adventure out of your engagement session and go stay in an A frame cabin in the woods. We’ll stay in sip some hot chocolate or wine, cozy up on the couch in front of the fireplace, and have an awesome time! That way, you’re taking advantage of all those winter vibes all in the comfort of the warm indoors!

So… What Are the Benefits of a Winter Engagement Session?

For this last part of the blog, we really want to emphasize a little more on the benefits of having a winter engagement session! We’ve had couples book a wedding package in the dead of winter and when approached with the setting up their engagement session, tell us they want to wait for the spring for their engagement session. And that’s completely okay! We would never turn you down for that! But we want to stick up for winter engagement sessions because they get a bad rap sometimes!

First of all, winter engagement sessions embrace the landscape of your home state! Minnesota spends a majority of the year covered in snow so why should we pretend that it doesn’t? Snow doesn’t always have to be a pest! We can embrace the snow! Let’s have a snow ball fight and show the playful side of your relationship!

Secondly, winter is truly a romantic season! When we think of winter, we think of cuddling up on the couch with some hot chocolate and binge watching all of our favorite movies! We think of going outside with the kids, building a snowman, and coming in to strip off our snow gear and warm up! This kind of romantic, playful energy radiates through your engagement photos! When you have your engagement session in the winter, that giddy feeling you have from the winter holidays can come through your photos!

Finally, winter is the time of year we have the most free time! Think of it like this: Wedding season runs from April/May through October. That means our weekends are usually full of weddings! But in the wintertime, we often have much more availability on the weekends! We know that weekends often work best for many of our clients while the weekdays work best for us during wedding season so the winter is when it would be easiest to get on our books! That’s the joy of working this kind of job where our availability is not always steadfast year round!

Winter Engagement Sessions with Winsome Photos

When it comes to winter engagement sessions, we love being able to work with you! Winter is such an amazing season and although it can be a pain in the ass sometimes, snow is a part of our lives! So let’s stop pretending like we never have snow and lean into our roots!

Winter engagement sessions can get a bad rap! We get it! Who would want to stand around in the cold, covered in snow, with a camera in your face?! Okay… that makes it sound so much worse than it actually is! Trust us when we say that winter engagement sessions are THE SHIT! And doing your engagement session with something out of the ordinary (or in non-desirable conditions) will make your photos THAT much more memorable!

So let’s get out there, play in the snow, and shoot the winter engagement session of your dream! Contact us today to set something up! Wanna hear about another way to make your engagement session special? Check out this blog about a memory map engagement session we shot! Finally, make sure your following us on all of our social media linked below!

As always, we love you all and hope you are doing amazing! xoxo