in all of my years of photography, the timing has never worked out for me to be able to capture a wedding proposal. the opportunity to photograph one in my ‘hood at the bowman’s hill tower in buck’s county for my assistant, kelsey, someone that has long been by my side in the photo world (and has been a part of so many of the couples wedding days here on my blog), was not one i was going to turn down. little known fact- my husband didn’t propose to me and i don’t have an engagement ring. we decided one day when we were in the bathroom together at home. it wasn’t fancy or a surprise, just a conversation in an intimate setting about where we wanted our life to go. in my whole life, i never wanted an engagement ring… so it worked out perfectly. truth be told though, it was exciting and heartwarming to witness a proposal for kelsey.
months prior to the proposal, james had reached out to me with a rough plan of what he wanted to do and was hoping i could help her get to the location. we tossed around ideas, put a date on the calendar and i started my long game of helping with the surprise. the plan was to tell kelsey i had a small engagement party and the couple wanted to do a mini shoot just before it. normally, i wouldn’t bring an assistant on an engagement session, so i worked in the idea of the party after. i knew kelsey was waiting all year to be proposed to, in fact, she told me if james didn’t propose by the end of the year she was going to propose to him, hah! i knew anything out of the ordinary would set off alarm bells in her head so i casually worked in this shoot. to make it more real i suggested that we needed a couple there so that she would think that we really were doing this shoot and it wasn’t a ploy to surprise her with a proposal.
i asked my local friends, chris and gretchen, if they’d be willing to pretend to be an engaged couple for about 15 minutes or so. chris and gretchen are a married couple so a little removal of the wedding rings and voila- i’ve got what looks like an engaged couple. i needed enough time for kelsey to start to give up on the idea that this might be the day. they gladly said yes. i started with some pics of the two of them while james and the violinists waited atop the tower. what is really neat is chris and gretchen are expecting a baby in june (i didn’t know this during the shoot)… so i love that the pics take on new meaning knowing they were expecting at this point in time. (i know my baby math because i made an early july baby, hah!)
at this point, james and two of his violinist friends were waiting up on top of the tower. i needed a way to get up there ahead of kelsey. i had planned with everyone that i was going to head up first to see if there was a shot and i’d need kelsey to stay down to position chris and gretchen for me via cell phone. in all honesty, with the light that day, the mist that was starting to fall and a nervous james who’d been waiting atop a tower for about an hour– i really didn’t have a great shot or time to create one. i grabbed this one and played it off like i was all good and had them head up…
james was hiding behind the door when kelsey first stepped up to hear the violin music and saw all of us looking at her waiting for something to happen. i’m sure she realized what was about to happen at that point…
it did take her a second to say yes. james did have to confirm it was a yes, which was super cute and funny… it’s an overwhelming moment for both. 
there is a natural inclination to hide our faces during surprised moments…
so much happy!
what kelsey also didn’t know is that some of their family was waiting down below and they had planned a nice dinner with even more family afterward…
it was a lot of fun working with james on his bowman’s hill tower surprise wedding proposal to kelsey. thanks to chris and gretchen for taking time out of their weekend to help keep kelsey surprised. thanks to ben and tory for hanging atop the tower for so long and providing beautiful violin music.
