engagement | karielphotography

Mistie is my… cousin-in-law? Second cousin? Not sure how this genealogy works, but she is my husband’s cousin, which makes her a cousin of mine of some sort. Though I haven’t known her my whole life like you normally do with cousins, the few years that I have known her I’ve gotten to know the sweetest lady ever. When she started dating Stacy you could just tell how happy she was and how in love they were. Fast forward I don’t know how many months, and Mistie tells me they are coming to our area around Christmas and wanted to know if I would take their family photos. Of course I said yes! We went to a morning Christmas service at their family church where she happily flaunted her sparkly new rock on her ring finger! Surprise! So these family pictures turned into engagement pictures as well! Just before sitting down for our family holiday feast, we walked around Nanny’s property and down the dirt road to the street sign. Why? Because my in-laws live on their own road named after them and she is a proud Lehrschall! I am so excited for the two of them to start their new lives together and join their two families together.

Becky is a friend of mine from college and even though she was two years ahead of me we’ve kept in touch since graduation and have gotten much closer post-college than we were as students! I photographed her sister’s wedding down in Murrel’s Inlet, SC last September (and they’re now expecting their first baby next year! I’m starting to see a pattern here…) and I’ll be photographing her and Michael’s wedding next August in Bridgewater, MA!

The engagement of these two seemed to have taken forever. They’ve been together for like, a decade. (Not exactly, but that’s what it felt like!) When Michael finally popped the question, I shouted, “finally!!” and did a happy dance. I love these two so much and they’re so similar to my husband and I; he loves the outdoors and fishing, she loves anything country and we’re both parents to a four-legged lab-child! Brody and Bear would be best friends!

When Becky said she wanted me to shoot her wedding I did everything in my power to make sure it could happen and I was so happy that I was able to do their engagement session despite living 800 miles away. It just so happened to be the same time that I was flying up to second shoot a wedding on Cape Cod so I was able to hit two birds with one stone! I flew in to Hartford, CT and drove to Hopedale, MA which is the cutest little country town I’ve seen in a while. Lots of winding country roads lined with trees almost peaking with fall foliage, stone walls, old wooden fences, big old farm houses; I was in HEAVEN going to their house! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves for how gorgeous the setting was and I was so happy to go back to New England during the best time of the year!