Maggie+Humberto // Durham Engagement.

When Maggie and Humberto sent us an e-mail, they told us that they wanted to have their engagement pictures taken inside Food World. I think I text messaged Geoff first, before responding to the e-mail, with something along the lines of, “WE GOT AN INQUIRY TO TAKE PICTURES INSIDE OF FOOD WORLDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” to which Geoff responded, “YESSSSS, FOOD WORLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!” We felt it might be inappropriate to respond to Maggie and Humberto in all caps with that many exclamation marks, so I curbed it as much as I could, but I think there still be might be some caps in there. Food World, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is an international grocery store in Durham. We actually stumbled across it while we were eating snow-cones at Pelican’s one evening; you can see Food World shining on down the hill. We needed cheese, and we figured Food World sounded like a grocery store, so cheese must be in there.

Cheese was indeed in there, but so were pinatas. And bags of rice. And fruit and vegetables that I couldn’t identify. And bags of Japanese candies and cookies and fish that still had their eyeballs. Every flavor of Jarritos imaginable! Bags and bags of dried peppers that I also couldn’t identify! Basically, we walked around Food World in stunned, international silence. It was incredible. Since then, we’ve obtained the knowledge of how to use some of those dried peppers to make General Tso’s, and regularly take out of town visitors on pilgrimages to Food World because it’s amazing. We still don’t know what most of the fruit and vegetables are, and we have yet to purchase a pinata, but small steps, people, small steps.

So the true pinnacle of our photography career was achieved Maggie and Humberto asked us to have photos taken in there. We were so happy someone else appreciated Food World as much as we do. And we were so glad when Food World graciously granted us permission to shoot some engagement pictures inside (always ask permission!). Maggie and Humberto also introduced us to their pastry counter and their taqueria inside! This was something we previously overlooked in our sheer joy to just be inside Food World. Later we also took Maggie and Humberto into downtown Durham and we had fun there, too (because they are awesome people!). But not quiteeeee as much fun as we had in Food World (because Food World).

Erika and Emmanuel Are Engaged

THESE TWO. We’re kind of partial to them because they lend us awesome British sci-fi movies with tag lines like “Inner City vs. Outer Space” and make us gluten-free cupcakes. Emmanuel currently has some of our comics out on loan, and we’d totally be borrowing his Walking Dead video game right now if we had a Playstation, but we don’t, so that exchange will have to wait. We even played Catch Phrase once where Erika was on my team, and I’m pretty sure she said, “Wild Goose Run” at least twice before I could coax “Wild Goose Chase” out of her and I won’t let her live it down (despite us being the best team and always winning). We like ’em a whole lot.

So they wanted to do a more candid-type engagement shoot because Erika’s smile starts to fade after forced-smiling for so long, so they proposed a cooking photo shoot. They both like cooking and baking. A lot. A whole, whole lot. Brunch is their favorite meal and I am pretty sure each time we’ve been with them, they talk about recipes. It’s pretty adorable, and I envy their knowledge of how to make things super tasty as well as local restaurant knowledge. They also watch a lot of Drunk Kitchen on Youtube (Google this – it’s awesome) so it was an appropriate idea. But they needed a kitchen and asked if they could use ours, and we said SURE! Because we like them, and also knew we’d get tasty things out of the deal (which we certainly did – jerk chicken with rice and margarita cupcakes!). So it’s kind of strange to see our own kitchen on the blog, but here it is!

They also just recently completed a Color Run, and liked it a whole lot. So they bought the colored powder for the session and threw it at each other (not in our kitchen). Then, covered in colored powder, we drove them back and ate delicious things and were very happy. Erika and Emmanuel get married in July and we will be there to eat their tasty food (and photograph them).