Wedding photographer can only do weekday afternoons/evenings for engagement shoots. Wedding's in under 4 months-- what to do?

Long text ahead:

So my fiance and I didn't plan on doing an engagement shoot initially, but decided in favor of it when our photographer offered a complimentary engagement shoot as a winter wedding-type offer. Our summer was spent on searching for a house and closing right around Labor Day--we booked the photographer shortly after. Between moving across town, rushing to secure other vendors, and starting a new job very recently, the engagement shoot was something we "should" do but never got around to it. That's on me, I know. With all that said, we'd still like to do the shoot to get comfortable in front of the camera. We've had maybe 20 photos together in the whole 6 years we've been dating.

Our photographer has multiple dates available this month and in January, but only does engagement shoots during the week, and all the days she quoted would be at 3:30 p.m. Several issues here.

• I have a little bit of flex time (new boss has already given me the OK to work 6 a.m.-3 p.m. that day), but my new job is closer to our house, whereas the photographer is on the other side of town, closer to where we used to live (40-45 minutes away). Working remotely isn't an option right now, nor is taking time off (maybe in January, but I've only got 10 vacation days and would like to save them for a honeymoon and the few days before the wedding). Fiance can get out of work early on Wednesdays but he's also about half an hour from the photographer's area on a good day and 40 minutes from home.

• We're not super familiar with our area. There's a couple of places we could consider (local park, downtown village area), but we don't know how conducive they are to an engagement shoot. Our old side of town has some pretty sights but gets hard to get to during rush hour.

• Did I mention we're in the Midwest and it gets dark at 5 p.m.?

I've brought the area and our schedules up with the photographer and we're tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, December 18. But do we:

A) Stick with that date, make the most of the sunset, and try to find indoor places to shoot?

B) Wait until January and take a half day or a few hours off?

C) Skip the shoot altogether?

The photographer also offered to do the shoot in the spring, but we'd rather not go that close to the wedding in late March. (Fiance also mentioned using the photos for invites, which I think is way too late now. Maybe on the website or framed at the wedding.)

Thanks for the advice, Weddit!

UPDATE: Thank you so much for all of your advice! We ended up doing the engagement shoot on Dec. 18 at a local park. The photographer was able to get a lot of shots, including some of us facing the sunset, and there was a surprise horse appearance (two women riding horses crossed our path and they were thrilled about us taking pictures with their horses). It snowed the night before and was 14 degrees outside, but the photographers were super into it and my fiance was a real trooper!