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?

So in writing I have an easier time calling them Kimberly and Dan, but it person it didn’t work out so well as I kept almost calling Dan either Daniel or Dinberly and calling Kimberly Kim… so we had to shorten it so I could stop making a total jerk out of myself. Thankfully, these two are totally cool and laughed obligingly at my cheesy jokes all night and braved the rain with no umbrella and were down.right.awesome.

Kimberly and Dan were introduced by Kimberly’s sister at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh in 2011. They hit it off and went on their first date to Goodnights Comedy Club (where we were able to take a few pictures!) and the rest is history. Both at in the United States Air Force… Dan in the reserves and Kim in active duty as an air traffic controller. Dan does IT guy stuff. They’re getting married on October 6th (my birthday!) in Las Vegas but, unfortunately in my opinion, not by Elvis. They have impeccably good taste in TV (Lost and Game of Thrones… Joffrey’s such a punk) and music (although we’re forgiving Kimberly’s affinity for country). They were super goofy and cute and did whatever the heck I asked them to without hesitating and I loved them immediately. I hope I get to see these two again in the future but for now I am wishing them the best.luck.ever for their wedding in Las Vegas in October! Cheers to you guys!

As if landing the sister of your former client isn’t a high enough compliment, Geoff and I apparently won over the future groom at Gwen+Nick’s wedding as well. Bethany told me on the phone that while her fiancé Kevin goes with the flow of wedding planning, he was pretty adamant that he wanted us to photograph their wedding as well. I love when the grooms like us. :) But even if I didn’t already have a soft spot in my heart for these two, they would’ve won me over in about 30 seconds anyway. :) This was the most playful engagement session I think I’ve photographed (Bethany did tell me on the phone that “…Kevin will be fine, we’ll just put him on the playground…” which turned out to be incredibly true), and two of the most happy-go-lucky people I’ve met. I think it shows, which is good considering Bethany told me, “You know those engagement sessions where everyone is all serious and they don’t even look happy to be engaged? Yeah, we don’t want that.” So I told them to just have a good time… and they did. :)

Without risk of ruining their whole meeting/first date/proposal story (let’s save it for their July wedding blog post, shall we?), I’ll give you Bethany+Kevin: fierce Words with Friends competitors, riders of ostriches, conquerors of the sandpit dinosaur rodeo.