Picnic Engagement Photos at Rice Creek Park, Shoreview

Derek and Colleen met me at Rice Creek Park in Shoreview, MN over the summer. They wanted to do engagement photos with two outfits: one more casual and one more dressy (totally normal!) and also include a picnic (not as normal, but here for it!) We started out walking around Rice Creek Park. If you haven’t been there, it’s a photographer’s dream. Miles of walking paths, tall Swedish Pine trees that make it feel like you’re further north than ten minutes from the twin cities, and rolling green hills. At different parts of the year the natural growth changes from springy yellow to summery green to a nice autumn brown (to covered in snow), so depending on the time of year it can look totally different! There’s also a walking bridge and a dog park if you want to bring your pet. So a lot of options, which is why I go here a lot and why it’s my favorite spot for engagement photos.

The picnic

In her picnic, Colleen included grapes and champagne. I mean really what more do you want. There may have been other items in the picnic basket, but that’s all we needed to have some fun with. Honestly, trying to feed each other grapes (or any other small food) is an activity I never thought would be so fun and candid. After hand-feeding each other grapes, they switched to tossing the grape up and trying to catch it in their mouths. It didn’t work well, but it was funny and caused some natural laughs. They were married the following summer in Minneapolis; here is a link to their wedding photo blog post!