Currently blogging from the couch as it’s my BIRTHDAY today! Posting will be pretty light this week as it’s a holiday week and I am just getting out of 4 back to back wedding weekends. Lots coming up in June (including our next DIY workshop!) as well, but for now, here’s a super awesome rockabilly inspired engagement shoot from Amber Reinink Photography!
Wade & Zoey’s Vintage, Rockabilly Engagement Pictures
Photographer: Amber Reinink Photography | Submitted via Two Bright Lights
“Wade and I first met on board USS Wasp back in Fall 2011, we worked in the same department and same space out to sea. The first time I actually remember meeting him and noticing who he was at duty section turnover one morning. I turned to my friend Heather and said “ummm don’t judge me but Brightwell is so freaking cute. “ Honestly from that moment I couldn’t stop thinking about him and finding ways to run into him on the ship. It was hard attempting a relationship because we worked in the same department on the same ship it was something that was really frowned upon. I would stay up extra late out to sea so I could hang out on watch with him and eventually we started talking more and more on the ship. We were spending between 12-16 hours day together underway between watches, evolutions and meals. When you spend that much time with the people you work with you talk about everything. I mean we were sitting in a dark room for 8-12 hours a day. We quickly learned A LOT about each other and honestly became best friends. Due to certain circumstances we didn’t start dating till the next spring.
Our first “date” happened when our ship pulled into New Orleans for a week around April 18th 2012 . We went out as liberty buddies and went down to Bourbon Street to get drunk and dance, and we did just that. I remember being at some bar with a live band playing the song Brown Eyed Girl, this was the first song we ever danced to. Literally every bar we went to played that song that night and we danced to it every time! Later on in the evening after quite a few drinks we stopped at a diner before we had to be back on the ship. We sat down ordered some crappy diner meatballs and I remember after the waitress left, Wade said “What’s the first country that comes to mind, and I didn’t really understand but I do know I said Germany (I have no idea why) Wades next words were “Leave your phone and wallet on the table and lets run away to Germany. For a few moments I thought it was a great idea, I also realized at that very moment I was in love with him. I talked some sense into him about how we couldn’t do that because The Navy would find us, we ate and went back to the ship. He walked me to my berthing and we hid away from one of the security cameras so we could kiss goodnight.
Click inside for the rest of this adorable vintage inspired, rockabilly engagement session and proposal story!
The proposal. I will start by saying I was a complete brat about this whole situation. Haha My family was so tired of me.
Back in Early 2013 my family lost both of my dads parents a week apart from each other, it was a really rough time for us. So the Keller/Zuckerman/Zimmerman/Morin family planned a week long “family reuniuon/memorial service” to spread my Nana Sybils ashes and just be together as a family. I told Wade on MANY occasions that this would be the perfect time to propose with my WHOLE family around. So we leave for the beach and I still was skeptical of a proposal happening. I am a grade a surprise ruiner and snoop and I hadn’t found or seen anything that would give me any indication of coming home engaged. So I constantly pestered my family the ENTIRE week thinking someone might crack. My sisters can attest to this. I think they were ready to kill me. I asked things like “Is Wade gonna propose” “Are you sure you don’t know anything” “Why isn’t he” “This would have been the perfect time to do it” ANNOYING beyond all reasonable belief. July 3rd is Wades birthday so we invited his mother and sister down to celebrate and I cooked this huge meal for everyone and made dessert and everything and I thought for sure it would happen that night but nothing.
My family had also decided since we were all together we would do family portraits. I had pitched a few ideas to my dad seeing as we are not normal our family photos should not be normal. My sister Jenna is a makeup artist/face painter/zombie makeup QUEEN so I asked Dad if he wanted to do Zombie Family Photos and of course he did!
I had also told my sisters that I was trying to look pretty every second of the vacation in case Wade proposed and they COMPLETELY used it against me.
So July 4th , family photo day, Jenna does my make up first and as she is doing it I’m pretty much complaining about the fact that Wade has not proposed. She keeps making me bloodier and dirtier and grinding more and more brown stuff in my teeth and I just thought she was making me extra dead. So she finished and I was so upset at that point because Wade came in AND APOLOGIZED for not being able to afford a ring yet and he told me he loved me and when he could afford one he would buy one. So I left and went to my room and just sat by myself for a little. When everyone was all painted and latexed up we went and took photos. About an hour later and almost zero patience left for this hot sticky latex on my face, I was told we were done. THAN all of a sudden Dad wants us out on the beach for more pictures, beyond pissed, I went outside. The idea was that we were going to stand in a family circle and put my nephew Jaxen in the center and pretend we were feasting on him. Everyone is in a circle and no one is putting Jaxen in the middle, so I’m annoyed. Dad says “Ok is everyone ready, we all replied yes and no one is moving. Than Wade gets down on one knee and says “Zoey Elyse Keller will you please spend the rest of your life with me? OF course I started crying and said Yes immediately. I felt like such a brat for being such a brat all week. My sisters told me later that he WAS going to do it on his birthday but because I made the pretty comment that he should do it when I was at my ugliest, DEAD! “
Congratulations Zoey & Wade! Thank you for sharing your super awesome engagement pictures and love story with us. A special thanks again to Amber Reinink Photography for sharing her images.
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