Dear Couple,

Thank you for hiring us to photograph your wedding day! Your wedding day is one of the many beautiful milestones you two will celebrate in your marriage. It’s Day 1 of your married life and one of the biggest parties you’d throw with your loved ones.

It can be a bit overwhelming with the many decisions you two will make to ensure you have an amazing wedding day. This guide will be all about the photography side: planning your engagement session, choosing outfits, makeup and hair tips, timeline tips, what to pack the night before, photo requests, and more.

We want to help you feel at ease when it comes to photos. We all freeze up when a camera is pointed towards us so we get it… We want to make this as easy as possible.

A little companion from us to you as you plan your wedding day.

All the best to you both!

Cheers,
Sarah + Dave
21 Pixels

Planning your Engagement Session

Our Easy Pixel and Mega Pixel Wedding Packages include Engagement Sessions. It’s a way to build rapport with our couples, to ease them in front of our cameras, and to allow them to have some fun in the midst of planning and chaos.

Your Engagement Session is not only a photoshoot to show off your ring and announce you’re about to be married. It’s also a photoshoot to show how happy and in love you are. It’s a glimpse to your love and bond.

We can discuss your vibe, your aesthetic, your vision and choose location(s) + outfits based on those ideas. We love collaborating with our couples to build a session based on them and their love story.

For the exact time, we’ll set the time for the start of the session once we figure out the date of your engagement session.

Outfits: Raid your closet or buy?

We emphasize wearing outfits that make you feel the most beautiful and comfortable. We have a Pinterest board that we added a bunch of clothing ideas and color palettes to have a starting point when planning your outfits.

Tip: You don’t have to wear a wedding attire (wedding dress + suit) to your engagement session. Unless you want to!!

You can match head to toe or mix and match, go bold, go chic, go minimalist, go loud, go monochromatic, go neutrals, go bright, go towards any direction you feel is right to both of you and the location for your session.

Additional Engagement Session Tips

• Plan your hair and makeup bridal trials for your Engagement Session. This will help you and your HMUA (Hair Make Up Artist) plan accordingly for the wedding day based on your session experience and the photo turnout.

  • Coordinate with your HMUA to finish at least 1-2 hours before your session starts to give you time to head home to change and grab a little snack!

  • For skincare, start prepping your skin at least 2-3 months before your makeup trial + wedding day. Do not do any facials you have not tried a month before your wedding day.

    • If you haven’t, check out J-Beauty Guam as they have amazing Korean skincare products and their staff can assist you if you have any concerns.

  • For haircare, discuss with your hair stylist what’s the best timeline if you plan to dye your hair or do any perms. The night before your hair style appointment, wash your hair and dry it well.

• Clean your ring the night before: 2 drops of dawn dish soap + warm water, a toothbrush, and 15 minutes of your time. Check TikTok, Instagram Reels, or Youtube Shorts of tips and tricks on how to clean your jewelry.

• For outfits, I know I said “go crazy,” but I recommend not wearing anything neon or with loud patterns/logos on outfits.

  • Do a quick “sit, hug, walk, carry” test at home to make sure outfits are comfortable and not see‑through or fussy.

• For 1 Hour Engagement Sessions, a strong outfit is better than trying to squeeze in 3 outfits and another location. We can maximize more photos when you don’t have to change your attire in the middle of the session or drive to another location.

• 2 Hour Engagement Sessions allow you to have at least 2-3 Outfits: Dressy (e.g., long dress + heels, dress shirts + chinos + dress shoes); Casual (e.g., shirt + jeans, jumper, sundress)

  • 2 Locations will have to be in close proximity to each other to minimize driving time cutting into the session time.

Location Guide for E-Sessions

Your outfit and vibe has to match the scenery. And if you’re not shooting against a plain white backdrop in our studio, outdoor locations matter depending on the vibe you’re going for: beach, city/urban, forest/jungle, cozy at‑home, café/bar, etc.

For private properties like hotels, cafes, and bars, you are responsible for contacting management to take photos at their establishments. Most places are nice to allow photoshoots to happen as long as we do not disturb other patrons and staff (and purchasing food/drinks is a plus to management.)

Beaches, parks, forests are free to utilize as long as there are public properties.

Here’s our Location Guide to help you choose a location for your session:

Back to Wedding Planning…

This next part is all about your wedding timeline.

Wedding timelines are guides. They help start a flow but they shouldn’t restrict you from having fun if they are too rigid. They should be helpful when it comes to know what’s next.

Even a simple one‑page timeline that will be shared with your wedding party and vendors will keep the day stress‑free and make sure we don’t miss anything important. We’ll add 10–15 minute cushions between the big moments so you can breathe, fix lipstick, or hug Nina Carol without staring at the clock.

Your timeline should include when each vendor arrives and finishes. I’ll help you plug in realistic times for photo coverage so everything lines up with your hours of coverage.

Even if you don’t hire a coordinator, choose 1–2 reliable people to be your ‘day‑of captains’ so you don’t have to answer every question.

Don’t forget to live in the moment…

It’s tempting to squeeze everything into the morning, but when the schedule is packed back‑to‑back, your wedding day can start to feel like a production instead of a celebration. If makeup ends at 10:30 a.m. and we try to fit getting dressed, first looks with parents and your bridal party, solo portraits, and full wedding party photos all before leaving for a 12:30 p.m. church arrival, there’s no breathing room. One tiny delay (hair running over, traffic, someone missing shoes) and suddenly you’re rushed, stressed, and cutting photos you actually care about.

Instead, we’ll prioritize what matters most for you and give each moment space. For example, we might choose:

• Getting dressed and a meaningful first look with parents and your bridesmaids before we leave

• Then save wedding party and most portraits for after the ceremony when everyone’s together and relaxed. That way you can slow down, soak it in, and still get beautiful photos without racing the clock

Circling back to prioritizing images that matter to you…

We have our must shot list memorized and engraved in the back of our head from 10 years of photographing weddings, but everyone is different and your wedding day is YOUR love story that has its own moments.

Feel free to tell us the moments that matter to you that you want us to keep an eye out for. As you plan your wedding, keep those moments noted on your phone or send me a text about it - from specific family group shots to details you have curated to candid moments with a few special members of the wedding entourage and guest list.

Family Photos: Quick + Painless

After ceremony is the best time to catch those coveted group formals with the couple, however, majority of the time the church or chapel will only give the couple 30 minutes after the ceremony to take photos.

Make a short list of the groupings that matter most to you both (for example: immediate families, grandparents, godparents, wedding entourage, extended family groupings, etc.) And we’ll arrange them to go smoothly.

If you do not have a Day Of Coordinator, assign a family captain per side who knows who’s who and can help us call people up. Once people leave and scatter, it’s like herding cats… I highly recommend that you let the people know that they can’t leave the ceremony site if they’re part of the list.

For folks not on the list, we can politely tell them that we can do more group photos during reception :)