Engagement Photos

A few months ago on a lovely evening, Dan and I had our engagement photos taken. Our photographer, Dana Pleasant, is absolutely wonderful and having this photo session allowed us to get to know her, and vice versa. I can't wait to have her take our wedding photos!

I'm not one to make serious faces in photos, and as anyone that knows us knows Dan and I are all about smiles and laughter, that's what our engagement photos are all about. We posted a bunch of these on facebook, but for those of you who don't check that out, here are some of our favorite photos.

I hope you like the pictures as much as we do! The wedding is only 3 weeks away now. See you all soon!

My Washington roots

It may suprise you to learn that I actually have roots in Washington - my paternal grandmother grew up in Aberdeen! My grandfather was an artist and he was hired to paint the Olympics to advertise the rail, my grandmother ended up taking him out hiking to show him around. These are some pictures from that 1929 trip that stun me - both Helen and Seaverns passed before I was born and these pictures make me so in awe of them and sad we never met. Hope you like them.

And here's the wedding announcement from the Aberdeen society pages - makes me smile. For the record, the 'summer months' they were going to spend in Weld became year round.

The love that brought us together: Snowshoeing

We met, we ate, we snowshoed. One year later, we celebrated with a weekend trip to Winthrop, WA to snowshoe. And then the next year we did it again. This year was our third anniversary trip to snowshoe - next year I guess we'll just have to call it our annual trip - we'll have a new anniversary at that point (one that doesn't share a season with snow). Each year we've enjoyed the chance to spend a weekend away from everything, playing scrabble, reading and getting a lot of fresh air and exercise on the mountain side. I could go on and on about the reasons I look forward to that weekend, and how much I fall more and more in love each time, but instead I'll just share a picture from our first big date, then the three pictures we've taken at the end of each weekend. Dan's three-day old facial hair is always the same, but I promise there's been a year between each - I seem to have a new scarf each year even. 

As promised: young Dan

Well gosh, I thought I was cute (yet awkward) when I was little but Dan was just straight up charming and handsome (as he still is today). There is a fantastic picture of 10 year old Dan in a tux at his oldest sister's wedding, but I haven't convinced him to let me post it on here yet. In the meantime, here is a great picture of Dan with his parents and grandmother, many years ago, on his dad's birthday. I'm really lovin' that outfit (and pose).

Re-do: Planning the wedding all over again

Whew. You may have noticed a few things changed on here....most obvious? The date and location of our wedding. Old plan? Semiahmoo Hotel on August 10th 2013. New plan? Port Gamble on August 31st 2013. Here's the story.

On Wednesday afternoon, our photographer emailed me and said "I'm sorry sorry to hear about Semiahmoo closing, let me know how I can help". Oh. My. God. My heartbeat sped up. I googled 'Semiahmoo hotel' and sure enough, a Seattle Times article, posted an hour earlier, pops up with the announcement earlier that day that the hotel will be closing in December 2012. But our wedding is 8 months after that! Holy mackerel. I burst into tears. I called Dan. Though I could hear the panic in his voice, he told me to calm down, to get in my car and drive towards home (I work an hour south of the city), pick him up, and that we would 'go home, eat delicious food and sort it out'. I did just that, and sure enough, we worked it out. We made a list of all of our favorite venues from our original search. We added a few new ones. We ranked them high, medium and low priority. At 8 am the next morning, we called them all, in rank order. Our #1 choice? The church and pavilion in Port Gamble. We struck out on almost every call, except the first one. They had ONE Saturday left and it was ours if we wanted it. We quickly checked the date with family, groomsmen and bridesmaids and by the end of the day we had signed a contract and paid the deposit. Cherry on top? Our incredible photographer hadn't booked that day yet, so she's still able to do our wedding! Hallelujah.

We couldn't be happier. We had loved Port Gamble in the first venue search, but were en route to Semiahmoo the day we checked it out and since Semiahmoo was beautiful and already in the works, we booked it. Though we were excited about Semiahmoo, we're ecstatic about Port Gamble. It just feels right - it's much more 'us'. One of our original goals was that we wanted our guests to have to take a ferry to get to our wedding, since the ferry ride across Puget Sound is one of the most beautiful things you can do in Seattle. Semiahmoo was on the water, so it worked for us, but our new spot is on the Kitsap Peninsula, which means...you guessed it....a ferry across the Sound!

Another great thing about Port Gamble? It was built by two men from Maine, so it looks like home. I knew my dream of getting married in Maine was always a bit impractical, but this is the next best thing! And now we get to have our ceremony in the most beautiful church - it is simple yet classic, and we get to ring the bell once we're married.

So that's our tale. What seemed like our biggest nightmare (in the midst of those first tears, I said to my coworker 'my wedding is cancelled!') turned into a reset on our wedding planning - it allowed us to take into account all we've come to hope for in our wedding, and now we feel so lucky that we've ended up with a result more like us than what we started with. We can't wait for our friends and family to come and help us celebrate! See you all on Labor Day weekend 2013!

Correction: That's an awkward picture of the bride

Though the previously posted picture is a favorite of mine - it was the height of my total obliviousness of my lack of teeth, crooked hair and poor taste in clothing - my mother isn't such a fan. To make it up to her, here's a favorite picture of me - with her! Love you Mom!

The bride and groom....way back when.

This classy lady is the bride.

A flashback picture of the groom is coming soon!