Romantic & Stylish Engagement Photo Inspiration

Planning your engagement session is one of the first steps in the wedding planning process. It’s the perfect opportunity for newly engaged couples to celebrate right away with a fun photoshoot! These photos will most likely make it onto the save the dates and maybe even hang in your newlywed home, so you want them to be perfect! Our friends at Lauren Conrad are sharing some tips for the newly engaged to help you plan the perfect session, and we’re excited to share the photos of three couples who did! Becky Schwartz helped these couples in cities across the country feel comfortable, and let them each show off their love for one another. Plus, she captured it all beautifully, if we do say so!

The brides to be all look exquisite in Paper Crown dresses perfect for their individual photoshoots! Whether on the beach or in the woods, they found something that matched their unique style and the beauty of the location. As they look forward to the ‘Big Day’ they’re sharing their proposal stories with us here:

Matt & Rachel, Santa Barbara, CA

Matt + Rachel met at church. Friends at first, it took two years for these two to realize there was something more. Matt had a few hoops to jump through to make Rachel see past the friendship. Rachel was prone to setting up brick walls when it came to potential male suitors, but found Matt to be genuinely interested in her as a friend, and therefore felt his friendship to be a safe place. Unbeknownst to her, Matt had other plans than just friendship, but did well to protect her heart he knew she so fiercely guarded. Rachel would say “He just sorta slipped in under the radar, and bam! I was in love…’Well done sir, I say…well done.'” The next thing Rachel knew, she was standing at the top of the Empire State Building, in the city she and Matt shared a deep love for, Matt down on one knee, saying many words of which she will never remember, except for, “will you marry me?” Question. Popped. She said “YES!” And the rest is happily ever after.

Rachel is wearing the Joliet Dress in Calypso Coral

Conrad & Rachel, Littleton, CO

Conrad proposed on Valentine’s Day in NYC, which happened to be our dating anniversary as well. Let me state for the record that I was NOT expecting him to propose at ALL. He cleverly psyched me out for months, so I thought that buying a ring was financially not even close to being in the picture until later that year or even a year out. So, I just knew we were going to a nice “mystery restaurant” for Valentine’s Day.

The mystery restaurant ended up being a beautiful Italian restaurant that I had wanted to go to ever since an internship back in 2008. I had admired it from the outside, from my favorite corner in the city- 59th St and 5th Ave. From 2008 onward, sitting by the Plaza fountain at this intersection was “my corner”.

We go to the restaurant off of “my corner” and have a truly perfect, romantic dinner. I mean, the classic NYC works- live jazz, plush velvet booth, rose petals everywhere, courses of decadent food and wine; All ending with Conrad giving me the most heartfelt and moving testimony of how much he loves me. My face held in both of his hands, his eyes filled with tears… I will never forget how eloquent and vulnerable he was.

Then, he informed me that we were walking across the street to The Plaza for dessert! (which sent me over the moon, even more than I already was…). So we head out into late night February in New York City, which is FREEZING. As we’re crossing the fountain in front of the Plaza, Conrad realizes he can’t find his gloves, and kneels down rummaging through his bag to see if he can find them before checking back at the restaurant. I stand there, shivering and growing more irritable by the ever-increasingly windy second, and I turn to tell him (with a bit of sass I have to admit) “I’m just going to go wait inside the lobby!”, when there his is… down with one knee in the snowmelt, holding a box in a very specific shade of blue.

The world stopped. I was shocked, my jaw truly hanging open as he untied the ribbon to reveal the Tiffany & Co. lettering, and opens the box to reveal THE classic ring I had adored for years and years. He asked me to marry him, and I obviously exclaimed rather enthusiastically, “Yes!!”

Rachel is wearing the Sonoma Dress in Red Daisy

Eli & Rachel, South Padre Island, TX

Eli and I got engaged on the same beach we took our engagement photos on. He had gone down the day before and buried an old bottle in the sand with a message for me to find. I found the spot he had hidden the bottle, pulled the message out, and read, “will you marry me?” I turned to look at him and he was sitting beside me holding the engagement ring! He asked me to spend the rest of my life with him and of course I said “yes”!!

Rachel is wearing the Goleta Dress in Mini Bouquet