An engagement session marks a specific event – you are getting married – and a love story session marks a relationship, at whatever point it is. Photographers use the two terms loosely and sometimes interchangeably, which is why the question comes up. In practice they overlap almost completely in how they are shot, and differ in why, when, and what the pictures are for. Here is the difference as it actually plays out, and how to choose.
What an engagement session is
A couples session booked because of the wedding. It usually happens between the proposal and the ceremony – anything from a year before to a few weeks before – and its pictures have jobs to do: the save-the-date, the invitation, the wedding website, the guest book, a frame for the reception table. Because of that, an engagement session tends to be a little more considered: an outfit chosen with the invitation in mind, a location that will look right on card stock, at least a few frames where both of you are looking at the camera and the ring is visible. It is also, often, a rehearsal – the first time the two of you have been photographed together properly, and a chance to find out what that feels like before a day when there will be no time to find out.
What a love story session is
A couples session with no wedding attached. Some are booked by couples who are not engaged and may not intend to be; some by couples who have been married for fifteen years; some by people on holiday who want one good set of pictures of the two of them in Lisbon. There is no card to print, so there is no brief beyond the two of you, and the session can be as loose as you like: a walk, a coffee, an afternoon at the coast. The pictures are for you – a wall, an album, an anniversary – rather than for an event, and that changes their mood. A love story set is usually less posed and more candid than an engagement set, simply because nothing in it has to be presentable to a hundred guests.
The differences, side by side
- Occasion. Engagement: the wedding. Love story: none needed.
- Timing. Engagement: between the proposal and the ceremony. Love story: any time, any year of the relationship.
- What the pictures are for. Engagement: invitations, the website, the reception, the announcement. Love story: yourselves.
- Formality. Engagement: a notch more composed – some camera-facing frames, the ring, outfits with the stationery in mind. Love story: as informal as you want; often entirely candid.
- How it is shot. The same. Both are lifestyle couples sessions – real places, light direction, prompts rather than poses – and a good photographer runs them the same way and adjusts the mix of frames.
Which one to book
If there is a wedding, book the engagement session and treat it as the rehearsal it is; you will want the card-ready frames and you will be glad you know what being photographed together feels like. If there is not, do not let the word stop you – a love story session is the same afternoon without the homework, and it is the one most couples who are not planning a wedding actually want. And if you are engaged but hate the idea of anything stiff, say so: an engagement session can be shot almost entirely as a love story with ten minutes at the end for the pictures the invitation needs.
Either one, in Lisbon
The city suits both. For the frames that need to look like somewhere – the announcement, the wall print – the viewpoints in the late light, the riverside, Belém, or the coast at Cascais and Guincho. For the candid middle of the session, the old quarters: Alfama and Graça in the morning before anyone is about, a tram, a café with a good window. Most sessions use two of these and walk between them, which is where the unposed pictures come from.
Whichever it is, the couples session is the format, and the first thing we talk about is what the pictures are for – because that, not the label, is what decides how the afternoon is shaped. If a surprise proposal is still ahead of you, that is a different session again, and a different plan. And whichever you book, the question of what to wear is answered in how to coordinate outfits as a couple.