First off I want to thank everyone who entered the contest and I have a special surprise for everyone who didn’t win, so make sure to keep reading!
The winner of the “Day After” Photo Session is….
Meredith & Eric
Here’s their story….
After a very long car ride and a night of anxiety (I had to meet some of his aunts,uncles and cousins our first night in Niagra Falls) we had a day of fun “touristy” things to do on the Canadian side of the Falls. We did the Journey Under the Falls, walked all around, did some shopping and felt the spray of the falls on our faces. It was a wonderful day….until I brought up marriage!!! I asked what he thought about it…and he brushed it off. I told him not to worry about money for a ring because i did not need one… and he ignored me! I began to become very upset. I didn’t understand why he was so against the idea. He had just introduced me to his family!!! But, he continued to just say “Why are you in such a rush”. Like I said, I began to become upset…to the point where at dinner I looked at him and said “You know what, I don’t think it is a good idea for us to EVER get married!”
After dinner we went back to our beautiful suite on one of the top floors of the hotel. Our room overlooked the falls (talk about an amazing view). It was about 8 pm and we had a romantic fire going in the room, and I was busy ignoring him and “throwing a fit” as Eric likes to call it! I was so sad at the fight we had just had that I really didn’t even notice the beautiful light show going on below us. The waterfalls were lit up in an amazing rainbow. With the water flowing and colors gleaming…I began to feel better! I turned to apologize to Eric for saying what I did at dinner. When I turned, he got down on one knee with a little black box in his hand! In front of a roaring fire and Niagra Falls in its glory, he proposed!!! I knew he really was the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with. Come on…how many guys would propose to a girl not even an hour after she told him she never wanted to marry him!! We are definitely in this relationship through good times and bad!!!
Congratulations Meredith & Eric! They will be receiving a 2 hour “Day After” photo session, their images on DVD, and a 16×24 canvas wall mount!
Now onto my special surprise for the remaining couples.
I really didn’t get as many entries as I had anticipated and I’m a sucker for romance, plus I just LOVE photographing these sessions, so I thought it would be fun to give everyone who entered a Mini “Day After” Session. All of you will receive a one hour photo session and all your pictures on DVD for you to make prints from. Here are their stories…
Candace & Levi
Ok so to start Levi proposed on me on my parents 25th anniversary. So with a little background. we always have used cute nicknames/petnames. We have been together for eight years this march. During the beginning of our relationship i developed the nickname Pooh (as in winnie the pooh). On every holiday, birthday, anniversary i would get some form of stuffed animal or something to do with winnie the pooh. So on October 18th, i was at work in the ICU at the hospital, and i was approached by another nurse who said there was someone there for me. When i walked around the corner there standing in front of me was a person in a large winnie the pooh costume. For a moment i thought this person got lost on the way to the pediatric floor. Once i realized it was him, with a bag/box from Jared’s and balloons. I turned to express my surprisement to the staff all huddled around watching, i turned back around to find the winnie the pooh head removed with levi on one knee. He pulled me in close and whispered romantic words (just so i could hear) as he asked me to marry him. I have pictures too!! We still talk about that day at work often. What a great memory.
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Jen & Jack
It was a drizzly, dreary day in mid July. I was sitting at home alone thinking about what to microwave for dinner and what would be on TV that evening. My cell phone rang and it was one of my closest friends, Laurie. I picked up the phone and Laurie excitedly asked me if I wanted to go to a party that evening. I immediately responded with “I don’t know. Where is it? Who else is going?” She told me that it was in Hingham (a good 45 minutes from my house) and that she was invited by her boyfriend’s friend so she really didn’t know who was going to be at the party. She told me that it was going to be a huge party with a hot tub, swimming pool, and a live band. We would have to meet up with her boyfriend’s friend so that he could show us the way to the party. I looked toward my couch and the TV, decided that the party was a much better option, and told Laurie to pick me up.
An hour later we had arrived at our meeting place with her boyfriend’s friend. His name was Jack and I had never met him before. We pulled into the shopping plaza where we were meeting him and he was waiting outside his car for us to arrive. Laurie said “Let’s get out of the car so that I can introduce you.” I got out and looked at Jack and when I looked at him I felt something that I had never experienced before. It was like an electric shock going through my body waking up a part of myself that I never knew existed. I tried to behave normally as I said hello to Jack and shook his hand. He said “Hi, Jen nice to meet you” and something about his eyes seemed so familiar to me. I wondered if he was feeling anything toward me. I had never experienced such an instant connection to someone. I could tell that he was a fiercely independent, brave, confident, and adventurous person. Something inside me knew that we would be an excellent match and that we could bring happiness and fun to each other’s lives. To this day, I have no way of explaining the immediate attraction I felt, but four and half years later we are inseparable, blissfully happy, and engaged to be married in October 2008.
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Jill & Damon
I know people say this all the time, but I wasn’t looking for love.
I’ll never forget the day that “The Maintenance Man” came knocking on our door to fix the deadbolt lock. Not only was he easy on the eyes, but he was so nice and pleasant in conversation. As soon as he left, I turned to my roommate and said “Oh My Gosh, I just met my future husband!!” We found a good laugh in that and enjoyed scoping out Damon from afar.
A few weeks later my closet door had come off track and I wasn’t able to fix it on my own (okay, maybe I could’ve, but it seemed like a justified call to the Maintenance Department.)
Now I’ve never been the most outgoing person, and certainly never the one to take the lead, but as I was leaving for my 12-hour shift the next morning, I knew that Damon would be stopping by to fix my closet door and that this would be my perfect opportunity. I left a simple post-it taped to that closet door reading, “Damon- if you’re free sometime, call me.”
Well, after a busy day at work I returned home to find a message from Damon. I called him back, and after getting over our 8 year age difference, we decided to go out to dinner on March 28, 2004.
So here we are, almost 4 years later: we’ve built a beautiful home, we have the most wonderful pets that we treat like our children, and now we’re getting married! On August 31st, I will walk down the aisle and say “I Do” to my Maintenance Man!
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Kate & Jason
Jason and I have been together since my freshman year of high school, his sophomore year. Truthfully, I was dating someone else when we met that afternoon in study hall. My boyfriend at the time was away on vacation in Europe so his seat in the auditorium, above me, was open. Jason decided that was a better seat than his. I knew he had an agenda, but he would say it was to be closer to his friends. Over the course of that week I turned around to “look at the clock” frequently enough that he finally asked me a question. I can’t remember a day since than that we haven’t talked. In fact that was sort of our thing. Every second we weren’t physically together we spent on the phone. One late summer night after my mother had already told me to hang up the phone I snuck out to the end of my driveway and he to his front porch. For some reason this night it was particularly hard to say goodbye. We simply stared into the clear night sky trying to absorb all the little things that make us who we are. We share everything from our favorite color to our family trees. We found ourselves staring at this spectacularly bright star. It was hard to feel so emotionally connected but not be able to even hold his hand.
These days I find myself thinking back to that night where I shivered in my driveway with butterflies in my stomach and hopes of what a future with this boy would bring. At the age of fourteen I knew I would have the honor of being his wife some day. That day is nearingand he still gives me those beautiful butterflies.
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So everyone’s a winner!! Happy Valentine’s Day!
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