Our Engagement Story (& Photo Shoot)

Last month, John proposed to me in the wee hours of the morning. That's right, Ink the Print will soon be a "husband & wife operation"! It's not the most romantic engagement you'll hear, but it was so "us". We had just gotten home from my cousin's wedding (which was a blast!) and were getting ready for bed, but I couldn't find my phone charger so I started searching for it like a madwoman. I looked everywhere, and just as I marched past John for like the tenth time and threw my hands up in defeat, he called my name so I'd turn back around. And there he was, on one knee with a sparkly ring in hand. "Col! ....will you marry me?" He had basically been down on one knee the WHOLE time and I didn't even notice. He jokes and says it was the longest three minutes of his life.

I apparently then proceeded by telling him to "shut up." That obviously meant "YES!" It's funny the things that will come out of your mouth when you're in complete shock. The engagement was something we had been planning for a while, but he led me to believe the ring was not ready yet. I give him so much credit for truly surprising me. Thankfully I had some cocktails that night at the wedding, or else I would have never fell right to sleep...I couldn't wait to tell the world the next morning!

We had chosen our wedding date last year. We do things backwards, that's just how we are ;-) October 9th is our anniversary (you can read more about that here) and this year it falls on a Friday. Next year is a leap year so it falls on a Sunday which is no bueno because, well because we like to party. It was last summer that I had this date realization so I brought it up to John one night while we were driving down to the family bay house in Maryland. I was so nervous to bring it up, but John just simply replied "it's possible" and that was that.

^ 10/9/06 ...we were babies!

So fast forward to March. We started getting the wheels in motion, which meant getting the family diamond from his grandparents (this makes the ring incredibly more special to us) and hinting to close family and friends to save that particular date. We also had decided on a backyard wedding and started figuring out some other details. And then you know the rest...

John and I have SO many photos together considering we've been together almost 9 years, but I wanted to do a special engagement photo shoot for our "save the date" announcement. We were running out of weekends to get this done so we finally just decided to take a Monday off and head down to Batsto Village. Back in 2006, I skipped work and the two of us went down to Batsto to do a photo project for class. We had our first kiss there that day, and also came home with chiggers. Needless to say, it was one of our most memorable days together.

Being that we're both photographers, we thought it'd be fun to just bring a tripod and do the engagement shoot ourselves. I love self timers and tripods :-) John was such a good sport that day considering he doesn't really like being photographed. We had a lot of fun doing the shoot and got a lot of exercise in while setting the timer on the camera and running back to get into the frame.

^ it's funny, this was the end of our shoot and I decided to instagram the moment. The photo on the camera display ended up being "the one" for the front of our "save the date" postcards!

^ We got these at minted.com and are very happy with them! All of their designs are made by independent artists, which I thought was pretty awesome. I had so much fun on their site. We went the postcard route to save money on both printing and postage. So these were affordable and shipped to us super fast thanks to a coupon code I found online.

And finally, here are some of the photos from our engagement shoot....

So we have less than 5 months to plan the rest of this wedding! We already have the venue, catering, rentals, photographer, & DJ so I do feel somewhat accomplished :-)

Oh, did I mention I can't wait to marry this guy? The word "husband" suddenly sounds like the sweetest word in the world to me.

7 Comments

So happy for you guys! I wish you nothing but happiness! Enjoy every day and never let go of each other!

Tracy & John

Posted by: Tracy Hastings | 05/13/2015 at 06:08 PM

Posted by: Tracy Hastings | 05/13/2015 at 06:09 PM

Thank you!! Celebratory shots are definitely in order ;-)

Posted by: Colleen | 05/13/2015 at 08:14 PM

I love everything about this blog post along with the two of you! He's my surrogate little brother and I loved you from the moment I met you, Col! We can't wait to see you become Mr. & Mrs. and your mother-in-law finally gain a daughter :) She so deserves one as wonderful as you. Oh so who's your photog? Creatives capturing creatives is an intense experience.

Posted by: Corinna | 05/14/2015 at 05:49 AM

Thank you, Corinna! You are the sweetest. Tish was telling me the other day how you're like John's older sister ;-) Our photographer will be David Hilliard Smith. I actually grew up with him and he's very good.

Posted by: Colleen | 05/14/2015 at 07:55 AM