Let’s talk about how this engagement has been flying by.

When Ryan proposed to me we had a little over 7 months until the date we set for the wedding. It seemed quick, but I am a pretty organized person and knew I would be somewhat wedding crazy until the date, so I figured it would be plenty of time. Sitting less than 3 months out, I cannot believe that in 80 days I will be a wife and all this planning will be executed. In the midst of all the planning, I realized my goal to document the process was not being fulfilled. As a result, I am working on a bunch of catch up posts for major tasks we have accomplished and will be posting those over the next few days.

One of the most exciting tasks I accomplished last weekend was finally having engagement photos taken. Our search for a photographer was probably one of the most challenging parts of wedding planning. I am a very “laissez faire” bride in many facets of the wedding, in that I just don’t care enough to get worked up over a lot of the little things – the important part is marrying the man I love. However, good photography, that also matched both Ryan and my standards was one thing I DID care about.

One of my best friends, Becca, was recently married and I LOVED the photographers she used. Not only were they super friendly and fun, they also produced beautiful pictures. She also told me they were very reasonably priced. When I met with them, I was all set to go and use them, but unfortunately their prices had risen significantly in the year and a half since Becca had booked them. I was still considering using them, but was not happy with the idea of going 500+ over budget. Ryan and I talked and decided to shop around a bit and if we still didn’t find anyone that compared we would come back to them and cross our fingers they were still available.

I emailed a TON of photographers and most were very expensive. We narrowed it down to 2 of the responses that were close to budget. We ended up meeting first with Amy Mullarkey of Amy Mullarkey Photography. She had recently moved to St. Petersburg, so while she had a lot of experience and great photos to show, she was building her business locally, and as a result had very reasonable prices. We ended up getting both 6 hours of wedding day coverage and our engagement shoot for only $100 over our budget! Additionally, our personalities clicked, and she lived very close to both our home and wedding venue, so I felt she had a good feel of the area we’d be taking photos.

We talked about the engagement photos when we first signed a contract with her, and all had lots of ideas, but nothing was really clicking with us. I did some poking around Pinterest and decided I liked the idea of a picnic style engagement shoot. I was on the hunt for a number of props that would reflect the feel of the wedding. I thrifted, bought , and scavenged from around the house items that would be useful for both the photos and the wedding itself. At the last minute, I asked if we could include our cats, which are like our children. She thought it was a great idea, and so we decided to have a backyard picnic, and some shots inside the house so we could easily wrangle kitties.

Later that evening, Amy sent us some of the first shots she took. I was immediately in love, and can’t wait to see the rest of them!