Our engagement story
The fact that I’m even writing this post still seems surreal. I remember always wondering to myself while in grade school the endless thoughts of what my life would be like as a grown up. The list was never ending, will I be able to buy my own car, will I ever get a job, I’m gonna have to cook, like a lot, and who would I end up marrying? I never had a specific image or type of person in mind, I just knew that I would know when we found each other.
Taking some portrait time in Nevada after photographing an intimate wedding in Lake Tahoe, NV!
For those of you who don’t know my fiance Christian and our backstory, I’m going to dive in just a bit here. We went to high school together for 1 year in 2009. I went to the Lehigh Valley Performing Arts High School my freshman to senior year, and Christian decided to come for his senior year. I was a dance major, and Christian was a vocal major. We had one class together, and that was creative writing. He sat in front of me and I always looked forward to seeing his smile and getting a hug from him. We were just great friends in high school, then when we both graduated we kind of lost touch. I went to photography school, and he went his own way.
After seven years of random bump ins and finally going for it, we reconnected in 2016 during the summer and he asked me if I wanted to go see Finding Dory. Seven years later, here we are! But like I said, this is a story about our proposal, so here we go!
This is our first photo together after an album release show with special guest appearances by his family!
DAY OF THE PROPOSAL
Our friends Lauren & Travis (owners of Love, Lorraine) live in Colorado. They were doing “van life” for a good 5 years and settled (for now) in the Centennial State. Since March they were asking us to come and visit, so we pulled the trigger and picked a date to fly out and stay for a few days. At this point, we were just going to Colorado, Christian didn’t have any proposal plans.
Leading up to our trip, there were a couple weird things that happened that kind of made my eyebrow raise but not enough to give it away. We flew out on the 4th of June and had a whole day and a half to almost two days of him trying to act normal.
Tuesday June 6th, we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park and we were going to hike to Dream Lake. When we arrived at the parking lot to start walking to the trail head, it started HAILING. I don’t mean light hail either, buckets and buckets of hail. We tried to wait it out, but the temperature had then dropped significantly. We decided to scrap the hike and head to somewhere else in the park.
We took a little break and headed down to the park office to wait out the storm a bit, then jumped back into the car. Lauren & Travis recommended a little pull off spot that had a great view of the mountains and was more on the private side. We started wandering around and I couldn’t get over the beauty of this location. Behind my back, Lauren turned to Christian and said, “She LIKES this spot!” and he went back to the car for the ring.
It isn’t uncommon for us to trade photos with L + T, so we were muses for a bit with some “brewery branding photos” they needed to get, and while we were being photographed, Christian started to pull my hand when I went to look at the mountains. He looked at me and he asked, “How about a little knee action?”. In that moment I think my soul left my body and I am pretty sure I said, “No youre f*cking not…”
Image: Love,Lorraine
Edit: Our Third Grace
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out this slim wooden box that held my beautiful engagement ring. I’m not even going to lie and say that I didn’t cry because I honestly couldn’t control myself. Guilty. This moment I had played over in my head a billion times in a billion different scenarios and never did I imagine something as amazing as Christian pulled. Even as I’m typing this the tears come flooding back into my eyes. I will NEVER forget that “holy sh*t” feeling, and I will forever be grateful for sharing this experience with some of our best friends.
Images above: Love, Lorraine
Edits: Our Third Grace
I think it’s pretty wild that we now live in Colorado, but we had the best times out here, we feel alive in our businesses and we’re ready to take on the world. I know its been a minute since we got engaged (7 months) but I just wanted to share this story with you.
One of my favorite parts about meeting new couples is learning their proposal story because I think it is unique to each couple and tells me a lot about who you are! If you’re hangin here newly engaged, send a contact form and lets chat! Let’s make a day tailored to who you are!
