Some couples have big ‘let’s just get our engagement photos over and done with’ energy.

Eura and Stu had “we own three cameras that require batteries no one sells anymore, host charming dinner parties in our spare time, and kiss in crosswalks every chance we get” energy.

Bet you can spot the difference from a mile away. One says task, the other says 90s rom com plotline.

And if I can be real with you for a second: too many couples are approaching their vintage engagement photos like they’re going to the DMV to renew their license, like its something to survive before the good stuff starts.

Respectfully, no. Engagement photos should be so much more than a line item on your wedding to-do list.

They should feel like the kind of memory you already miss a little bit, even though it’s still happening. 

When you work with me, your engagement photos look like that moment in a 90s rom com (you know the one) where the audience grabs the nearest arm for emotional support and whispers, “Wait, I love them!” while trying not to cry into their popcorn.

Thankfully, Eura and Stu wanted that exact same thing for themselves—something quirky, playful, flirty, and alive. Something that both looked like them and that you couldn’t possible look away from.

So if you, too, would rather have engagement photos that feel like a cult-classic 90s rom com, let’s discuss.

1. Stop settling for vintage engagement photos that could belong to complete and total strangers.

I say this with love: if someone could swap places with you in the photos and the concept would still work, we may need to have a little come-to-Jesus together.

Your engagement session should feel oddly specific to your love story. 

The neighborhood you wander every night after dinner, the park where you overstay every picnic, the coffee shop where you become regulars too quickly, the bikes you take out when the weather gets ideal on us, the film camera you bring everywhere because life looks better on analog.

We need the details that make a session feel like you instead of “engaged couple #473.”

(Funny how the best photos tend to happen when people stop pretending and simply live their real life for an hour while I tag along.)

2. Be the exact kind of weird you already are.

Eura specifically requested quirky, flirty poses. I said, BET.

Some couples keep trying to force themselves into “timeless elegance” when their actual brand is “cutesie weirdos with excellent banter and a bit of a Nancy Meyers aesthetic about them.”

That distinction isn’t something we can shove to the side, girlies.

Eura and Stu are the type of humans who know about the cool events before literally anybody else because they ‘have their sources’. They bring camcorders to all of their events with their friends. 

I mean, their grand entrance for their wedding was them riding in on a motorcycle. You can’t GET any quirkier than that.

So yes, we did colorful sunglasses and sprawled in the grass like little kids. Of course we encouraged goofball behavior under the respectable title of portraiture.

You do not need to become more conventional or ‘palatable’ simply because a camera is present. If anything, as a Minnesota couples and wedding photographer with an elegance-meets-eclectic touch: I’d recommend the exact opposite.

3. Let yourselves act like you’re (still) crushing on each other in a 90s rom com.

One of the strongest memories I have from Eura and Stu’s session is thinking: “I feel like I’m third-wheeling a first date.”

Now this may very well have been their four hundredth date but you that unmistakable spark was still plain as day. The teasing, the flirting, the inability to stop smiling at someone who is objectively embarrassing you in public. It was all there, giving us that glaring Nancy Meyers aesthetic.

Long-term love gets marketed as serious all the time, when in reality some of the healthiest couples I know are still acting like they met three weeks ago and still counting their lucky stars about it.

Bring that energy to your vintage engagement photos.

4. Romanticize your life like it’s 1998.

There was a time—not even that long ago—when people knew how to have a day.

They left the house without documenting the outfit first. They made loose plans about where to meet up and somehow found each other anyway. They got a little bored and, instead of scrolling through six apps about it, accidentally created adventure.

Eura and Stu have that energy in spades, and I’d like us to use them as a way to revisit that feeling, emotionally.

Eura and Stu are film cameras, bikes, and friends who I want to meet because they all sound so cool. They’re activities that require leaving the house and moments enjoyed before being uploaded.

Very 90s rom com, very early 2000s indie film, very “we made pasta from scratch and listened to records and forgot to check our phones for an entire weekend.”

If you want photos that feel straight out of a 90s rom com, start by doing something tactile and real, like they did in the nineties.

Walk the Twin Cities. Jump off a dock into a lake (Lord knows we have plenty of ‘em!). Share fries on the hood of a car at dusk. Touch grass, in both the literal and spiritual sense.

The camera can tell when you’re actually living, and sessions like this give us the part of the 90s rom com I never get tired of: the moment everyone watching knows they’re endgame.

Need fun couple photoshoot ideas for a 90s rom com inspired session? I’ve got ‘em!

Out & About Vibes:

rollerblade together at a park path or boardwalk

walk to the corner store for candy + fountain sodas

rent a tandem bike and absolutely struggle through it

browse a record store

get burgers and fries at an old-school diner

wander a mall with soft pretzels and zero urgency

play at an arcade / pinball bar

go mini golfing

canoe or paddleboat together

run through sprinklers in a yard

drive to a beach and share snacks from a cooler

climb onto playground swings after dark

eat popsicles or ice cream cones while walking through your neighborhood

go thrifting together (be still, my thrift-loving heart!)

go to the batting cages or bowling alley

Homebody / Cozy 90s Romance Vibes

make boxed brownies together

order pizza and watch VHS movies

build a blanket fort in the living room

flip through old photo albums together

make a mixtape / burn CDs for each other

do a puzzle on the floor with Chinese takeout nearby

paint a room / assemble furniture together

5. Stop trying to create chemistry for your 90s rom com engagement photos.

I regret to inform the people that chemistry cannot be summoned on command by replicating the fun couple photoshoot ideas you found on Pinterest or standing six inches apart in coordinated outfits.

What vintage engagement photos can do is capture the chemistry already there: how his hand always finds your lower back, the way you look at him after he says something a little bit dumb but totally endearing, the laugh that starts before the punchline is even said. 

I didn’t make a career of inventing romance; I made one out of noticing how much of it you already have. 

Bring it to the session, and the rest is a walk in the park (perhaps literally).

6. Make yourselves slightly jealous of your own life.

This is one of my highest goals for a vintage engagement photos gallery. I want you to look through your photos and think: “Wait… our life is high-key adorable.”

Sometimes we are too close to our own life to realize it is charming and romantic.

Photos can hand that perspective back to you. They can show you that your ordinary little rituals are, in fact, the good stuff.

And years from now, when your grandkids are flipping through the photo album of your engagement session, that may end up being the most romantic thing of all.

If Meg Ryan and Nancy Meyers were co-directing your engagement session:

Would they put you in a random field wearing neutral linen and asking where to place your hands? Be serious.

They’d put you on bikes. They’d give you city light, good banter, movement, chemistry, and a scene so charming your future children would feel pressure to live up to it.

So if you want the pivotal 90s rom com moment in your engagement photos: Choose your real life. Choose your natural dynamic. Choose movement. Choose charm.

And above all else, choose whatever is so specific to the two of you that no one else could replicate it, even if we handed them a storyboard on a silver platter.

And if you need an engagement and wedding photographer who takes romance, nostalgia, and slightly quirky concepts very seriously: I know a girl.

Want to see how this exact brand of quirky, endgame energy translated on the wedding day—motorcycle entrance, main-character romance, and all? Read Eura + Stu’s wedding post next!