Do you consider yourself a victim to what seems like the unattainable comfort & beauty of Yesly & Tony’s couples portraits?

You are not alone! Their photos in Paris have come up on my couples Pinterest boards countless times in the last year or two, & we always discuss how they seem to be the perfect balance of candid & editorial. They seem so effortless!

It can be intimidating if you are not usually a couple who likes to be in front of the camera. But I do firmly believe that, if those are the types of photos that draw you in & feel authentic to who you are as a couple, we can make your Pinterest dreams come true.

One of my 2025 wedding couples, Meg & Ryan (I also can’t help but think about all the iconic NYC rom coms when reading their names next to each other…),

Really wanted engagement photos that felt comfortable, natural, with a touch of editorial to mix things up. My dream type of session!

So when we met up at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park at 7am, I told them the strategy to get photos like Yesly & Tony’s are to be entangled with one another. Let your arms fall around each other, hug each other close like you need their body warmth to live, sit on a bench with your legs tangled together.

You want your movements to feel relaxed, almost lazy. Involve movement, so rather than having your hands wrapped around your partners neck, move it around from a wrap, to a hand on the cheek, to pulling them in for a kiss, to then draping your arms around their neck again.

Then, every once in a while, tear your eyes away from each other to get one looking right at the camera.

These are tender moments that will be able to capture not just how you interact with each other, but also the breadth of who you are in this moment, as 20, 30, 50, 60 year olds madly in love, & building your lives together. You don’t need to have an upcoming wedding as the reason for these photos either. You can mark moving into a new neighborhood with a couples session, perhaps a dating anniversary, or simply have a session just because you will never be exactly who you are in this moment ever again, as an individual or as a couple, so why not memorialize it?!

Something that is important to note though,

Is to draw inspiration from photos online that feel authentic to who you are. Meg & Ryan pulled off the Yesly & Tony entangled vibe SO well. My husband Viet & I though are not necessarily the entangled type. We joke that sometimes when we are out to our Wednesday date night, people think we are just two friends out to dinner. So for us, when we take couples portraits, it’ll look a little different. Yes, some will be of us cuddling up to each other like we do from time to time on the couch, but a lot of them will also be of us making weird faces at each other, or going for a walk around the park, not holding hands, Harry & Sally style.

There is no one way to do couples portraits. You can do whatever feels most natural to you, or a mixture of different vibes to cover all sides of your relationship! So while for 95% of couples, any session would be out of your comfort zone, just make sure the inspiration you draw from semi aligns with who you & your partner are in public or behind closed doors.