Proof of Tracy+Colin’s Awesomeness

Sometimes photographers book that perfect client: the one who repeatedly tells you, “Oh it’s cool. Do whatever you want. We trust you completely.” They don’t panic and ask you a few times whether or not it’s going to work or whether or not they look silly, they just come and have fun. And believe it or not, that gives us photographers a ton more confidence to be awesome (sometimes I think clients forget that we’re nervous too). And then you get engagement sessions like this.

Tracy and Colin are the best and we’ve only known them a few months. But their wedding is at CAM next year and Randy Bennett is the DJ and Tracy likes all the embarrassing emo/punk bands that I do (names omitted to protect the innocent) and Colin’s super friendly and nice to everyone so I’m pretty sure it’s going to rule. Plus they’re pretty good looking, don’t you think?

raleigh engagement photographer: heidi+aaron

heidi, aaron and i first met through the wonderful chelsea mills of chelsea reality group whom i met through the downtown raleigh alliance, so our relationship is kind of like six degrees of kevin bacon. :) i could tell from our consult for their wedding that they were a crazy fun couple and i was so stoked when we decided to do a downtown engagement session with them! and they were just as fun as i imagined them to be, of course, if not more. :)

they’re a downtown kind of couple, which i can totally relate to,  and aaron proposed to heidi downtown, so we spent last thursday afternoon bouncing around various locations and getting some funky city shots. their wedding is at the raleigh rose garden in april 2011, so we bounced over to the rose garden after we finished with downtown to get some shots for her mom. :) i had a ridiculously hard time narrowing down these images for the blog because they’re both gorgeous and the city was awesome and it was a super shoot, but here are some of the faves!

so without further ado, meet heidi and aaron. :)

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oh yeah, and their dogs! :) lola and waggy mae, respectively:

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after their wedding at the rose garden, their reception will be at the sheraton, where i hope to convince them to go outside for some night shots down fayetteville. :)

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it was really hard to get them to not smile or laugh, which had me smiling and laughing, which in turn made it more difficult for them to not smile or laugh. :) but we got some “serious face” shots in there anyway! :D

raleigh engagement photographer

the following picture was their idea because this couple was the definition of a fun couple. :)

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and, ladies and gentlemen, i present to you…the best family portrait EVER.

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thought this was cute! they’ll be married on the lawn in front of them. this is like the pre-wedding planning shot. “where will we put the chairs?” :)

raleigh rose garden engagement photographs

she is gorgeous and will make a totally beautiful bride. i can’t wait!

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yay!! i had a blast running around with them and am so looking forward to their wedding next year! make sure you check back for them in 2011. :) good luck with the planning, you two!

ENGAGED.

after 2 long and grueling weeks of begrudgingly keeping my mouth shut, i can finally announce that my boyfriend (fiancee?) and i are engaged!!! :D

we got engaged two weeks ago (august 22nd) on top of hanging rock while we were on vacation for our anniversary. it was night, no one was up there but us, and it was beautiful! it couldn’t have been more perfect. we couldn’t tell anyone for two weeks because we were waiting to go home and tell our families in person before my sister and the world found out via facebook or some other non-personable way.

and i couldn’t wear my ring for 2 weeks while we waited to go home. :(

it is fantastic! geoff and i have been talking rings for a long time now and had some basic ideas, but beyond that i wanted geoff to put his own design into it. so he designed it from scratch and david i. helfer jewelry (in the clark building in pittsburgh) made it for him. geoff let me read the long string of e-mails between the two and all of the various forms and shapes the ring took while geoff was tweaking the design. it was pretty awesome to see how it transformed. i LOVE the ring and think geoff and ira, the jeweler, did a marvelous job. i couldn’t ask for a more awesome ring.

and from those who have seen it, i get the same questions every time… so i figure i might as well answer them in bulk (since a lot of my friends and family read this blog).

carolyn’s ring FAQ:

1. what is that?

it is a green diamond. diamonds turn different colors in nature when exposed to natural radiation. this is why “color” is one of the c’s when you’re looking at diamonds. the most common color is yellow, but they more uncommonly can turn blue, green, purple, red, and all shades in between. it is very rare to find diamonds that come out of the earth naturally colored, so they are naturally outrageously expensive (we’re talking 100k to 5mil per carat). obviously only j lo can afford that.

for the rest of us, they make them affordable by artificially radiating them. this just means that they take a handful of diamonds, manually expose them to radiation, and see what color they turn. this would be the natural color they would turn in nature, so yellow is still the most commonly found radiated diamond, with blue, purple, green, and red still being decently hard to find.

2. what are all those black stones?

black diamonds.

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ring2on top of the engagement champagne cork. :)

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there have been a lot of developments in the past 2+ weeks about our wedding – yes, we do have a date and a venue. and no, i’m not going to take my own wedding photographs. :) after 7 years of dating we’ve had a lot of ideas for a long time, so now it’s nice to see them finally coming true on paper. more details will be coming out within the next several weeks, but i will say that i am so excited about what we’ve planned so far, both sets of families are thrilled, and we couldn’t be more stoked for next october!