Est. 2012 | Colorado Springs, Colorado and Charlottesville, Virginia wedding & family photographer

 I haven’t been to downtown Alexandria for an engagement for what it seems like forever! So I was happy to see when I was scheduled to come here for Jim and Jen, it was going to be the perfect fall, sunny day! I can get use to this. 😉 This was my first time meeting them in person and after only photographing them for the first 10 minutes, I immediately could detect their openness and willingness to expose their love. And their love is so sweet! I enjoyed the time spent running around downtown Alexandria picking out some new and unique spaces for their session I’ve never used before. 🙂 They picked out the perfect outfits for this session as the patterned blue dress went nicely with the downtown brick backdrop and loved the simple white against the water/dock area. I left Alexandria with excitement to go through their images and excited to share some of my favorites with you today!

We first met in 2010 while we were both working at the hospital at Ft Bragg, NC. Jim had just started his Family Medicine intern year and I was working for the Internal Medicine department as a Physician Assistant. At the end of the day, I was “signing out” our patients to the resident who was going to cover those patients overnight, to be available to take care of emergencies and issues that arise during the night shift. This happened to be Jim. We did wind up chatting for a while but I had really assumed he was already dating/married as most of the other residents. I was pleasantly surprised the following day when one of the other residents asked about my situation and for my phone number, to give to Jim. Our first date for a hike in the local state park went well and we hit it off quite easily.

We dated for a few years (with a separation when Jim deployed to Afghanistan). Eventually Jim moved to the Virginia area as he decided to pursue Ophthalmology. We wound up dating long distance for about half a year before I decided it was time to move to Virginia as well. Upon a visit to the Kennedy Center just before Christmas to see a performance of Handel’s Messiah, Jim proposed outside on the patio overlooking the Potomac. It was a beautiful night and such a beautiful location. Jim does still love to joke that I was so shocked (and actually backed up) when he dropped down on one knee (even though I had gone to the store to look at rings with him earlier)! It really has been wonderful to receive so many congratulations from our friends and family on our engagement and our upcoming marriage.