When selecting a spot for your engagement session, there are endless possibilities around Chicago and Chicagoland. The usual winners like, North Avenue Beach, Montrose Harbor, Lincoln Park, and the Chicago Botanic Garden, are always awesome and we really love them, but for those of you looking for something different, there are still a few places that are still on our "wish list" we would love to try this coming year. So here they are, and in no particular order...

  • Chicago mural crawl - Native 312 Events offers street mural tours in West Town, Logan Square, Pilsen, and the Wabash areas. This would be a fun way to see the murals in an area, learn about the artists, history and take photos.
  • Chicago Water Taxi ride - We always thought this would be a fun city/nature combo adventurous engagement session. Riding it through downtown and getting off in Ping Tom Park would be the best of both worlds. Definitely a great way to enjoy the city from a unique perspective and then land in the park just before sunset.
  • Ice Castles Lake Geneva - The closest you'll get to the real Ice Hotel in Sweden, the ice castle in Lake Geneva is a super cool spot to visit and take photos in the winter. Just be sure to get your tickets in advance, they sell out very quickly.
Best Wedding Photographer in Chicago
  • Night Session with Stars - We have done this once before at a wedding but we would love to try again during an engagement session. This of course would take some planning and flexibility on the date because a lot depends on the weather, the moon's brightness, etc. but it would be well worth the trouble.
  • Indiana or Michigan Sand Dunes - The dunes are an amazing blank canvas for you and your partner to really get some epic portraits on - think about a flowing red dress in the wind, footprints in the sand, golden light, and amazing sunset silhouettes. Let's rent a ATV and explore!
  • Lightscape and Chicago Botanic Gardens - The Chicago Botanic Garden are always amazing, but around the Holidays they have a truly spectacular light display after sunset. We visited it this past year and it would make an amazing engagement session location.
San Juan Capistrano Engagement
  • Milwaukee Art Museum or anything architectural - We absolutely love with lines and cool structures, they always makes our creative fireworks go crazy. But if you can't travel to Milwaukee, no worries, there are endless opportunities all around Chicago or the US.
  • Bonus - other random items on our list include: a destination engagement session (more on this soon), huge flower fields in the spring, and getting a tattoo together - just you guys, not us :).
Laguna Beach Wedding Photo

We hope these sparked some ideas for you! Don't be afraid to think way out of the box for your engagement session location and most of all have fun!

We would love to know other ideas you came up with, send them our way!

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