Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Rebekah+Braden

Two high-school sweetheart couples in a row here on the blog. :) Although, Rebekah+Braden have known each other since they were very little and their mothers were long friends. She wrote in an e-mail to me, “I’m pretty sure I fell in love in the 7th grade!” Rebekah is currently a senior at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (Not NC’s Fayetteville) getting her degree in speech therapy. I’m always really interested in what people do for a living and realized with surprise that Rebekah is my first speech therapist! This was kind of exciting because my sister is a speech therapist, so we talked about that stuff for a while. :) Braden is here at Campbell University pursuing his masters in Education so that he can coach football… both high school and college. He played for 3 years at SMU in Dallas and still plays at Campbell. They are both super cute and sweet and we had a great time with them! I told Rebekah to wear boots because we’d be trapezing through some tall grass, but while we didn’t run into any poisonous plants, there were plenty of signs telling us to avoid the snakes. :(

I do believe this was Geoff’s last engagement session for the year that he’ll shoot with me as his regular full-time job prevents him from shooting once the sun sets earlier and earlier, but I appreciate him coming with me to this session and all the others throughout the year! He’s obviously still coming to weddings, but I can handle the engagements on my own. ;) Thank you for attending as many engagements as you could in 2011, Geoff!

Congratulations, Rebekah and Braden! We hope your Texas wedding is wonderful! :D

Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Katrece+Dominique

The first time Katrece and Dominique tried to do an engagement session, we cancelled it due to the literally 100% chance of rain at the time of their session. Of course, despite the 100% chance of rain, it was completely sunny. :) We were all disappointed, but at least this make-up session was just as beautiful out as the day we cancelled, haha, and I was happy to finally meet the happy couple!

Dominique is a civil engineer for Raleigh and Katrece currently lives in Phoenix where she’s a manager for an insurance company. They’re getting married in Michigan, where they’re both originally from. They met in high school… and Katrece laughed as she told me that Dominique’s first words to her were, “So, what football team do you like?” In fact, Katrece laughed most of the session as did Dominique. :) I don’t think I’ve ever been around such seriously happy people. They weren’t nervous (or, if they were, they didn’t show it), didn’t make me nervous (and I usually get pretty nervous), and were just totally chill… poking fun at each other and themselves the entire time. They were seriously fun to work with.

We went downtown, where Dominique requested, then to Lake Johnson, where Katrece was adamant about getting pictures taken in a naturey setting. Dominique was not cool with this… mostly because he’s really into his shoes and there were a lot of geese. ;) But the pictures are great, and I’m sure you’ll agree it was worth it, Dominique! :D

Can I just say too, that both Katrece and Dominique were the two tallest clients I’ve ever worked with? Seriously, seriously tall… and ridiculously good looking, of course.

Congratulations on your wedding, Katrece and Dominique! We wish you the best of luck with your ceremony in Michigan!

Raleigh Engagement Photographer: Katie+Cameron

Meet Katie and Cameron! They are one of our June 2012 couples and we couldn’t be happier to have them. :) It took a while to schedule this session – Katie is in rotation for podiatry school in Iowa and is in a different state every couple of months, but their parents both reside in Raleigh and eventually they made it home! They’ve both been together a very long time and it took even longer for Cameron to pop the question since Katie was was tired and repeatedly turned out his requests to get out of the house with him. ;) Baahaha (this, by the way, is a story we’ve heard before. So couples, if your partner is repeatedly insisting that you get up and go somewhere with them, you might want to consider it).

They’re such a sweet couple and we had a good old time traversing a few neighborhood parks avoiding poison ivy here and snakes there. While Katie’s tuxedo cat wasn’t able to make the shoot, we still made the best of it. ;) Here are a few of my favorites!