Two weeks ago, my email inbox pinged. It was Brandie, asking about wedding photography for their celebration at The Quarry in Mt. Vernon, which their friends lovingly refer to as Narnia. She shared her and Grant’s story with me, showing me their wedding website they’d built with all the fun details. She was so excited.

Imagine my surprise when Grant emails me just the other day, stating that he was going to officially propose and wanted to have me there to capture it all! They’ve known each other for YEARS, and have known that they were going to get married for a while now, I mean they built a wedding website and everything! The last piece to the puzzle was Brandie’s ring. It arrived from Blue Nile a couple of days before, and little did she know, he was going to lead her on a wild goose chase made of fibs, fake phone calls, and secret texts to go pick up her ring at the Fed Ex office. Alas, there WAS no box at Fed Ex for her, so what is one to do except go spend the sunset at the Space Needle? Random, right? But hey, we all have our random moments. By this time, Brandie was getting a little suspicious, but just a little.

Up in the elevator they went, Grant touching his pocket to make sure the box safe and sound. He waited for just the right moment, as the crowd cleared a tiny bit, giving him enough room to drop to one knee. The crowd went wild, liiterally, with whoops, hollers, clapping, and banging on the windows! The whole needle was a shakin’ with excitement and noise!!!!

After all the hoopla died down, Grant started to explain some of the back story, and we chatted about the moments leading up to the big question. My worst nightmare came true as a surprise proposal photographer- I had been spotted before the proposal! Brandie actually recognized me hiding out on the observation deck since she’d been to my website already!!! She brushed it off as a coincidence or case of mistaken identity until she realized Grant was actually proposing, and then she put two & two together.

They were local celebrities for the next hour as folks recognized them as “the kids who got engaged on top of the Space Needle!“

And then a genius idea hit me like a Mack truck. Barbie doesn’t have a proposal facedown for her website, ILoveFaceDowns.com!!! Brandie and Grant were all too eager to participate!

The EMP/SF Museum, designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry, is so beautifully lit at night.

Congratulations!!!! You two crazy cats are so cute together, and I had sooooo much fun getting to hang out with you on one of the most memorable days of your lives!!!!!!

They’re from Oregon. He lives in India. She lives in Seattle. They are high school sweethearts.

They adore indie movies. In fact, that’s all they used to do together when they were in college studying economics and marketing.

He flew hours and hours across the globe, in cahoots with his soon-to-be mother in law to plan this day, this moment.

Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny March afternoon, and it was perfect for Anay to ask Ruchi to be his main squeeze, officially.

Congratulations, you two! Anay, I am so so glad that you forgot your camera and had to ask me to come along instead. So so glad!!

Boy did Joey have Lauren fooled. He had her convinced that he “wasn’t the marrying type.”  In fact, just the other day when he had called her parents to ask for their blessings, Lauren’s mom confessed that Lauren had confided, ” Mom, I’ve graduated college and now I have a Big Girl Job. What more do I have to do to get him to marry me?”

That was precisely when he knew his timing was right for a surprise proposal on their Christmas vacation to Seattle.

Joey calls me for a little help, and at just the right moment, off Lily and I went with 4 dozen rose petals to one of Seattle’s most iconic locations: Post Alley in Pike’s Place Market. It was one of the wettest days of the month, no doubt!

Among raindrops and fellow vacationers, down on one knee he went.  And the rest is history. This is definitely ONE New Year’s Eve to remember!

Congratulations, you two! Lily and I are so glad to have been there for such a great moment in your lives and love telling your story!

I have been looking for perfect pocket-sized brag books to add to my studio’s offerings for ages. Finally…. the 3×3″ Accordion Pocket Album!!

Available in sets of 3, they are perfect for little photography gifts to grandparents or bridesmaids, or just for carrying in your purse! I’m a stickler for good print quality, and have finally found the best!! These come in a few different paper choices, as well as leatherettes (like this mod red one!) and canvases.

This one I had printed up as a surprise for Nick and Danni (it’s of their actual marriage proposal we photographed last month!), and kept one for a studio sample (and a fun memory, of course! What a GREAT day!!).

I rarely do promotions over here, but I thought it would be fun to include 6 of these for each wedding package booked in January just for giggles. So there ya’ go: now you can’t say I never gave ya’ anything

Last night at 7:00 at night, after a long day of moving boxes and furniture (Our new place has THREE floors. Good grief.), the phone rings.

Me: “Hello?”

Voice: “Hey Laurel, this is Aaron. Alyssa and I are shooting a wedding, and I can’t get the Pocket Wizards we borrowed from you to work. Also, I bought a ring today and I’m going to ask Alyssa to marry me tonight over a late dessert. Should someone be there to take pictures? What are you doing tonight?” Wait, what? Did you just ask me a technical question and a romantic question in the same breath?! What?! WHAT?!

At this point, I may have squealed a little.  I probably jumped up and down a lot.  Alyssa is one of my good, good friends. She’s a photographer with a successful studio over on the other side of the lake, and makes AWESOME pet portraits to boot. I couldn’t wait. I felt like an expectant father waiting outside the delivery room (or what I THINK one could feel like . I was paralyzed with excitement, and for 2 hours I watched the clock while sitting in a bony chair (Remember, just moved. No couch yet). Literally. Watched. The Clock.

After a string of sneaky texts and covert voicemails, we had our plan. He was SO excited, talking a mile a minute, saying the cutest things (faster than usual, and this boy talks FAST! I saved the messages for you, Alyssa!!). So… when the time came, I parked outside Tangletown’s lil gem of a wine bar, Eva, Twittering hints and teasers of what was about to happen.

Then it came. The text that said “1 minute warning.” I jumped out of my car so fast, I barely noticed it was pouring rain.  The plan was that I’d have to shoot through the window- if Alyssa were to see me, it would all be over- she’d either know something was up or invite me over for dessert. SO, here I was, 10pm, by myself, in the rain, shooting like a Peeping Tom through the fence AND a window. Creepy- that’s my middle name these days .

And then the ring came out on the table. And lots of sweet looks and smooches. After a few minutes, I began to wonder if Aaron even remembered I was outside with all the excitement of the hearing the word he’d been waiting to hear for months (YES!). As one last surpise, he pointed out his personal Peeping Tom, and Alyssa flipped when she realized I was outside the whole time!!

Congrats you guys. I am so excited you found each other, and even more excited that I could be there to document such a wonderful memory for the two of you. Seems I may have found the favorite part of my job… proposal photography .

p.s. Alyssa… I’m watching Craig Ferguson while typing this. And he just said “OOHlala!”

Today is November 6th, 2009. To most of us, it’s just another fall Friday (Insane winds, funnel clouds, and torrential downpour. You know, the usual . To Danni and Nick: it is the day they got engaged.

I first met Nick last month over email when he asked me, “Do you shoot in the rain?” I almost fell out of my chair laughing, because in Seattle, rain doesn’t stop us. In fact, we don’t even use umbrellas. Right Nick? Right. (he totally noticed this phenomena earlier today while walking downtown!)

Lets set the scene. Nick is an illustrator for a hot gaming company. Danni has a huge following on her design blog, Oh Hello Friend (it’s yummy, just check it out!). They met at art school 4 years ago. In fact all three of us went to the Art Institute; me in Seattle, they in Orange County. Represent!!

His plan: surprise Danni with a flight from their sunny and “everyday-is-70-degree” Orange County home to the rainy “every-day-is-a-crap-shoot” Seattle getaway, only he didn’t tell her WHERE they were going. Normally a risky move, but Danni looooves rain.

The other day, some pictures of a very special nature arrived in my inbox: I was to magically get these to appear on the back of my camera (you’ll see, just wait for it!). Now, cue the actress, Seattle’s own Darrah Parker (wild applause emanates from the audience). At 1pm today, Darrah and I boarded a ferry to Bainbridge Island, and found ourselves snapping pictures of each other on the windy deck while crossing Puget Sound. Okay, Fib #1…. I was REALLY snapping pics of Danni and Nick, acting all cute-like in the background. Nick not only woke up his sleepy girlfriend from her short snooze on the relaxing ferry, but dragged her out to the violently blustery (um, understatement of the year) deck to watch the silly girls shooting pictures and take in the sea air. He gets an A+ for his mad setup skills- he kept pulling her into ideal spots for us to snag some shots no matter what her agenda was! Nearly an hour later, we found ourselves in the gorgeous Bloedel Reserve, a historic, well kept, private park on the island.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. I kept saying to Darrah, “What if he changed his mind and he’s not coming? What if they got lost in the 150 acres? What if we are the WRONG “Waterfall Lookout By The Historic House?” Sure enough, here they come, meandering down the path. Seriously, Danni, could you walk any slower? Didn’t you know there were three people screaming silently in their minds with excitement with what was about to happen? Of course not. She was sightseeing and leading their self-guided tour, map in hand, having a grand ol’ time, mostly oblivious to Nick’s scheming.

Enter Darrah, stage left. Laurel wanders off to check her cell phone and “look busy with something else,” while actually getting into position. Mini-fib #2.

“Oh my gosh! Hey! Weren’t you the guys on the ferry?” chimes Darrah. Luckily, Danni totally remembered us as being the silly tourist girls on the deck getting blown over by the wind, and being all smiles, greeted us like old friends as Nick gave “The Look” to mean it’s “Go Time.”

“I saw you guys, and I took some really cute pictures of you. Wanna see?” Fib #3.

Danni and Nick agree in unison. Nick reaches into his pocket. Here it comes.

Darrah flips through some of the cute (stalker-like!) images we snuck of them on the ferry. Then she gets to the first REAL image.

Then the next.

Then the next.

You know what comes next.

She turns around, and Nick is on his knee, holding the sweetest ring I ever saw, barely able to hold those four words in his mouth before they gushed out in the most beautiful sentence a girl ever wants to hear.

Nick MADE this ring. He designed it on the computer, putting painstaking time into the fine details (my picture is NOT doing it justice, for sure!). He has some fancy dancy 3-d modeling machine thing at work that carved this delicate little number out of some composite type of material (I asked Nick twice and forgot what it was again!). LOVE it- straight from the heart and 100% unique.

Thank you both so so much for inviting us in to your lives to document such a private and exciting moment for you.  It was the best thing that we could ever hope to do on a stormy Friday afternoon, and had so much fun crawling around in the wet muddy grass! We hope you have a really fun weekend doing all the fun Seattley things, and hope you get more rain so you can really use your brand-spankin-new umbrella

And in case you were wondering how this story ends, she said yes.

It’s taken Andy 6 years to realize it was time.  So when Darryn and Stacey were planning their wedding, they thought it would be the perfect opportunity for Andy to make a splash with his proposal to Vickie.  Everyone was in on the secret, it was incredible and amazing that there wasn’t a slip of the tongue or a peep of special significance.  I don’t know much about these two, only that Andy had a stunning ring in his pocket all day.  The excitement had everyone on the edge of their seats- the energy of what was about to come was incredible.

It all happened just as Andy had planned: first Stacey threw the bouquet.  She turned around quickly after a fake, like a woman on a mission, heading straight for the unsuspecting guest.  Haha, people get called out all the time like this at weddings, but I wonder if this one girl in particular knew that her life was about to change forever as the crowd quickly rushed the dance floor in anticipation of what was about to happen (and they carried Corey Bogle, Lily, and I right up with them!).  Andy emerged from the crowd, and bent over to whisper what only the two of them would ever know, before dropping to one knee, pulling the solitaire out of his pocket.  It was an emotionally charged moment- the crowd was surging and crying and shaking all around us as she said yes, and he swept  her off her feet in a hug of excitement and elation.

Congratulations you guys, I’m so glad I was there to capture this for you!  It was a reception and proposal I won’t soon forget!