Of all the engagement sessions I’ve done in my career, I’ve never started one quite like Nadia and Mark’s! To start from the absolute beginning: I know Nadia through her sister, Nazanin, who I went to school with many, many years ago. Recently, Naz reached out to me on Facebook and told me her sister was getting married…so I had the pleasure of meeting Nadia and Mark, learning about their love story and proposal (which I LOVED) and now I’m their wedding photog and friend! So for the engagement session, Nazanin suggested a little stone church and a pretty lake in a New Jersey state park…and after my successfully failing to find the church and even getting desperately lost trying to find the lake (which I did find eventually, by the way) during my site visit before the session, the nearby Botanical Gardens sign emerged on the horizon. I relayed this info to Nadia and behold, the gardens became the location for our session! We had agreed on a start time of 7:45am and I had texted Nadia the day before to ask her to meet me at the actual gardens first, where we would utilize the pretty light and then move on to the other locations. Of course I had NO idea that Nadia never received this text and so the morning of the shoot, I get a call saying not only are Nadia and Mark at the lake down the road (our other pretty location of choice!) but that their car had broken down!! I drove down with my rusty (but trusty) jumper cables and thankfully, after breaking down a second time, we were all able to get to the gardens, call AAA and get our beautiful session in while help was on its way. So even though we started later than planned, and on one of the hottest days of the Summer so far (we hit 90 degrees before 10am!!!) with the humidity hovering and the steam rising from the ground, we achieved a romantic, fun and sweet engagement session with more greenery and plants than I’ve ever seen!

I looove the way they look at each other!

This little cove of trees was too pretty to pass up!

How gorgeous are Nadia’s eyes??!

I was BUSTING to get these two in front of this gorgeous lillypad pond/fountain!

This is one of my favorite parts of the entire session! Nadia spotted this mini sundial in one of the gardens so of course we both thought: “ring shot!”

Favorite! Those smiles are just too genuine.

Cannot wait for their gorgeous wedding next month! Yee!

VENDOR

Location

Ringwood Botanical Garden

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