Another Monday, and another weekend gone. But it was a celebratory weekend as Justin & I celebrated our 5th anniversary. Our son gifted us with dinner alone – or at least that’s the positive spin I’m putting on his refusal to take an afternoon nap on Saturday ;) I think it was the first time we’ve had dinner, just the two of us, since Valentine’s Day, when my parents were visiting and we went to dinner. Other than that, it was a pretty low key weekend, which is just how I like my weekends to be – quality time with my two favorite gusy.
Hitting the blog today, we’ve got one of my favorite couples from last year. Not only are they the sweetest couple, but so are their families! Be on the lookout for their wedding feature in the coming weeks, but for now, enjoy their adorable engagement session!
We met in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC, back in the fall of 2014. Through a combination of mutual friends of friends in the museum world, and running into one another in the neighborhood, we eventually found ourselves on a date on December 4th at Beau Thai.
Despite starting at a reasonable time, around 6:30pm, we wound up being the last table to leave that night. The next night we met up for a wine and cheese date, and it kept going from there.
Sometimes Anna’s job would take her out of the country, and it felt 100% “official” when she let me watch her Australian Shepherd, Elsa, and orange cat, Molly Ringwald, while she was in Turkey. We’ve supported one another through some big job changes, and, after a year and 1/2 together, we moved into the same apartment.
The proposal wasn’t something orchestrated by either of us secretly. In some ways, we’d been talking about marriage for a while. There were definitely betting pools from our families on when we’d finally do it — and some side bets on who would ask first. Rather than give them any type of satisfaction, we plotted and schemed an engagement our way and on our terms.
Anna was on a work trip to Jordan and then Morocco, and I’d banked up enough vacation time to take a week away from the coffee shop I was managing, that I could meet her for the tail end of her business trip for a short vacation. Late April of 2018, in the city of Fes, Morocco, we planned our engagement together. Mirroring our first date, we somehow found a Thai restaurant in the medina, and made the mutual decision that we were officially going to announce our engagement. Patched into the airport wifi, we called family members with the news.
Anna picked out her antique engagement ring at a local jeweler in Cleveland Park through the odd luck of passing it while walking Elsa one Saturday morning, and her wedding band at SHELTER at Union Market. My ring is my grandfather’s wedding band–a gift from my mother.
When it came time for picking a photographer, we were floored by Kelsey’s previous work. The two of us trying to pose never led to a great photo, so it was important that we found a photographer who was able to catch candid and natural moments. The fact that she had an Australian Shepherd herself was icing on the cake. We met up in Mount Pleasant for engagement photos in the fall. We absolutely had to take shots at Beau Thai (still our fav restaurant), we absolutely had to have Elsa alongside us, and it was great walking down the same Rock Creek paths we did early in the relationship. Kelsey did a great job at making us feel comfortable and made sure we were also having fun, because let’s be honest, having someone take photos of you for two hours has the potential to be really awkward. Getting to know Kelsey during the engagement photos really made the wedding day even more comfortable.
Follow their love story and check out their wedding too!
