Gosia is my partner Agnieszka’s sister, and she’s marrying Maciek this year. For the occasion, we decided to give them a small gift before the wedding: an engagement session. I think it works well as a keepsake ahead of the big day, and it also helps them get used to a camera before the most important day of their lives.
I think that beyond being a keepsake, an engagement session is also a better choice than a wedding-day session on some other occasion. There are a few reasons for that, which you’ll find in a post on my blog. Mainly, it comes down to getting to know the photographer better and getting used to the camera. Gosia and Maciek already had their own photographer booked for the wedding, and I was only going to be a guest, but I still think a session like this before the wedding did them good. There’s always time for post-wedding photos too, whether on the wedding day itself or another day.
From what I’ve noticed, Gosia and Maciek enjoy having their photos taken, and before the wedding itself, they also fit in a session with their own photographer, who took some wonderful photos too.
The Engagement Session at the Palace in Pławniowice
We started our session at the Palace in Pławniowice, where there weren’t many people around that day, so the couple could have their first session together without any onlookers and focus even more on each other. There was a lot of laughter, but also a few sweet moments that I managed to catch. Gosia and Maciek are an amazing couple.
The palace stands in Silesia, several hours’ drive from Warsaw, so I turned up there not as a hired photographer, but as a family member with a camera. That actually worked in the session’s favour. Nobody was watching the clock, nobody was ticking off a shot list, and when something wasn’t working, we just moved on and tried somewhere else. A couple’s first session together almost always starts with about fifteen minutes of stiffness. Here, we got that out of the way before anyone had time to worry about it.
The Palace in Pławniowice has survived in really good condition and is very well kept. That’s the complete opposite of, say, Moszna Castle, which, despite the crowds of tourists, doesn’t impress with either the state of the building or the gardens. Every detail has been looked after at the Palace in Pławniowice. It’s a great spot for an engagement or wedding session, but you should expect to be asked to pay a commercial session fee, more on that later.
For a photographer, this place has one convenient feature: everything is close together. The facade, the gardens, the nooks around the buildings and the water are all within walking distance. You don’t need to hop back in the car and lose half an hour driving between one backdrop and the next, which, over a two or three hour session, makes a real difference to how many shots you get.
At one point, while we were taking more photos around the palace, we found a small black shed that made a good backdrop. That’s when a gardener showed up and told us we needed a permit for the session and had to pay a fee, because we had “professional equipment”. Unfortunately, we couldn’t explain to him that we all knew each other, that Gosia and Maciek weren’t my clients, and that the engagement session I was doing for them was simply a gift from me. In the last photo by the barn, you can see the look on their faces as the gardener started paying us attention.
So if you turn up there, even as tourists with professional-looking equipment, watch out, someone might ask you for an extra fee. As a compromise, we dropped a few złoty into a special collection box by the entrance to the palace grounds.
Take one thing away from this, because it’s not just about Pławniowice. Most places that look like a good backdrop for photos have someone in charge of them: a palace, a park, a botanical garden, a courtyard, a beach by a resort. A camera on a tripod or a flash unit signals to staff that this is a commercial session, not just a walk, and that’s when the conversation about a fee starts. One phone call or email the day before takes this whole situation off the table. It’s much worse having to deal with it right in the middle of the best light.
The Engagement Session by the Lake in Pławniowice
After that adventure, we headed to the beach next to the palace. You could already tell the session had loosened up, because Maciek wanted to try some acrobatic first-dance moves with Gosia, but we didn’t want to risk it just before the wedding, so we went down to the lake to look for more atmospheric shots instead.
We were pleasantly surprised by a beautiful sunset that lit up the shore of the lake perfectly, right where we’d gone to take the last photos of our engagement session.
The sun went down, and that’s where we called it a day.
That’s actually the reason I stick so firmly to timing for outdoor sessions. The last hour before sunset gives light you can’t fake with a flash, and it lasts exactly as long as it lasts. If a session starts two or three hours earlier, there’s time to warm up, time for spots that don’t work out, and time to make sure the best shots land when the light is at its best. A session booked for the middle of the day doesn’t have that buffer.
If You’re Thinking About Your Own Session
A pre-wedding session is the simplest way for us to get to know each other before the big day itself, the one with no retakes. It’s not just about the photos, it’s about not having a stranger with a camera next to you on the wedding day. If you’re thinking about your own, see what’s in the packages, or take a look at the full wedding story, from getting ready to the midnight bouquet and veil ceremony.