Wedding Wednesday: Engagement Pictures and Save the Dates

Cody and I were engaged in October and decided to take engagement pictures in February. To be honest, I wasn't thrilled with them. There were a few good things about the decision. We learned how to be photographed. We saw some of the derpy faces we made in front of the camera and learned in advance not to make those on our wedding day. I also learned that my eyebrows disappeared in front of the camera and absolutely needed to be filled in. I also learned I was going to have be a little more vigilant with the self tanner for the wedding day since I looked completely washed out.  We got to know our photographer and how awesome she was (my lackluster feeling about the photos had nothing to do with her and her amazing talent). I just didn't feel like we looked like ourselves. But we knew then to bring our A game for the wedding day. We also got a photo for our Save the Date. We had a little fun, too!

We decided to take photos at three different locations:

Location One: The Hotel Minneapolis.
This is a hotel that just happens to have a really cool lobby and bar area. We also took some photos outside on the sidewalk and in an alley there.

Location 2: Saint Anthony Main
From there we went to take outdoor photos at Saint Anthony Main. We didn't know it at the time but we'd end up living about a half mile from there as newlyweds!

Location 3: Keegan's Irish Pub

We went here for trivia one of the first times we hung out. We returned many times while dating and engaged and now live just a few blocks away. When we started dating we bonded immediately over our love of Ireland and Guinness so it was a great stop. We actually realized it should have been our first stop as we totally loosened up about being photographed as soon as we had a drink :)

Our Save the Date!

We ordered these from Wedding Paper Divas. I knew we were going to have really nice formal invitations that would probably end up being expensive so I wanted to get something cheap and easy. They were extremely easy to make and they were delivered very quickly!

Funny note: I knew we were going to have approximately 150 guests so I quickly went to order 150 Save the Date postcards. It completely evaded my mind that most people were invited in couples or families so we have well over 75 cards leftover. Whoops!

Linking up!