Jessie & Mike
How They Met
Mike and I have been together for just over seven years. We met in college at Penn State University through a friend of Mike’s, who he had fallen out of touch with for a couple of years. On one of the first times that he met up with this friend again, Mike went over to his house to watch a movie. In the middle of the movie, his roommate (me!) came down the stairs ready to go out for the evening. I wondered who the cute boy sitting on my couch was. I sat down with my roommate and Mike for a while and ended up finishing the movie with them. When the movie was over, Mike walked me to a party a few streets away. We got lost on the way, but that gave us more time to share funny stories and learn about each other. Mike likes to say that he believes that was the last time he went over to his friend’s house to just visit his friend. A few days later we went on our first date at a great Thai restaurant followed by French press-brewed tea at a local coffee shop.
The Proposal
I took Jessie out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants – a French restaurant in Durham where we always share the same meal: Goat cheese and caramelized onion tart, mussels in a Dijon mustard broth, and dark chocolate mousse. Between the restaurant and our apartment is a really pretty part of Duke University, on which there is a building where her grandmother used to work before she died years ago (and where Jessie used to visit as a child). Family is important to Jessie. Her grandmothers are especially important to her and one of her great lamentations in life is that by the time she eventually moved to North Carolina her grandmother who used to live here had already passed away. So, I took her to a spot where I believed her grandmother used to work. We sat on the steps to listen to the summer bugs. I asked Jessie what her grandmother would think about me if she were still alive and then what her living grandmother (Nany) in New York will say at our upcoming visit when she tells her that we’re getting married. I then said that I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I also said that I wanted to ask her in this place so that her grandmother can be near us, and that I wanted her to be able to tell her Nany in NY that we were getting married while she was still alive (she is on hospice), and will she marry me. I didn’t kneel. We just sat on the stairs and held hands, and it was just simple and natural.
The Engagement Session
We chose the apartment we were living in. It was our first place together. We loved living in that apartment but knew that it was a temporary home. We wanted to remember that special time of our lives when we were first living together in our tiny loft apartment in the city. It was cozy and we still remember it fondly. We cooked every night – the kitchen had this great big counter where we could really spread out – and we used to dance in the kitchen. We also wanted to have our engagement session really represent who we were as a couple. Our apartment and cooking are just natural and comfortable for us. Cooking together is such a big part of our relationship and is when we really get to spend quality time together so we wanted to emphasize and immortalize that aspect of our lives.
The Engagement Ring
Shortly before I started seriously planning to ask Jessie to marry me, she went with a friend to a jewelry store and ended up looking at engagement rings for fun. She saved some pictures of some rings that she liked on her Pinterest board. Without her knowing, I studied the style of the rings on her Pinterest board and talked to her friend about what she liked at the store, and then went back to the same jewelry store. I knew that Jessie’s taste isn’t flashy at all, but she also isn’t a type to like a very simple or modern ring. I knew she loves everything about the style of the 1920s. I didn’t get any of the rings that she originally picked out because I found a better one in the estate section that I felt (along with the help from my brothers who were kind enough to spend more than three hours with me at the jeweler) better suited Jessie’s aesthetic. The diamond in the original ring was an older cut (less sparkly) so I had it replaced with a shinier, slightly larger, diamond.
The Photographers
“We love to turn our engagement sessions into fun and unique dates that truly tell the story of each couple. So when Jessie and Michael mentioned that their favorite thing to do together was to cook, we knew we had to incorporate that into their session. What resulted was one of the most fun and unique engagement sessions we’ve photographed! The images truly tell the story of who Jessie and Michael are as a couple.”
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