Where is the best place for me to do an engagement shoot in melb cbd?

Lovely question, Jenny. The locations the others have mentioned are all solid, so I'll give you the angle we actually think about when we plan a shoot: light and time of day usually matter more than the spot itself. In the CBD I'd build your session around golden hour, that last hour before sunset, when the light bounces off the buildings and softens everything. Hosier Lane and Degraves Street are gorgeous but they're popular and the laneways can go quite dark, so we'd hit those earlier and save the open spots for the warm light.

If you want variety in one shoot, I'd pair two or three spots that are a short walk apart so you're not losing time in traffic. A classic CBD loop might be the laneways near Flinders Street for that gritty Melbourne texture, then over to Southbank or the Yarra promenade for water and city skyline, finishing in a green pocket like Fitzroy Gardens or the Royal Botanic Gardens for something soft and romantic. Just keep in mind some gardens charge a permit fee for photography, so it's worth a quick check before the day.

One thing to think about: weekday mornings or late afternoons are far quieter than weekends, so you'll get those laneways and arcades with fewer people wandering through the background. We're a Queensland studio so we travel for shoots like this, but wherever we are, every image we capture is edited in-house by us, never outsourced, so the final look stays consistent across all those different locations. Have a wonderful time with it, Melbourne really does spoil you for choice.