This week amidst the Pandemic & Black Lives Matter 2020 Protests we’re sharing a light, positive moment: Constanza & Justin’s Spring Engagement Session that we captured at the end of May-! Constanza is actually from Chile, but moved here to the U.S. when she was offered a scholarship for an Engineering degree at the University of Notre Dame-! These two met downtown here in South Bend while both were out salsa dancing AND found out that they were BOTH engineers-! Justin is actually originally from Minnesota, but both remain here in South Bend, Indiana working as engineers for Honeywell & MTI Industries. Amazingly both of them were allowed by their companies to work from home much of the pandemic over the past few months, but Justin has since had to physically go back in to work while Constanza’s company has allowed her to continue to Work from Home. We’ll tell you more about these two as we go, but onto their Engagement Session-!!
These two South Bend, Indiana residents had February 2021 in Chile set as their wedding date & country until the Pandemic came rolling through the U.S. largely in March. They had hired us in February to capture their Spring May Engagement Session, but once they saw the seriousness of the Pandemic playing out, they actually got legally married at the end of March 2020-! We had no idea that they’d already been legally married for 2 months by the time we captured their Engagement Session until they told us-! They’ve also since moved their large wedding with friends and family back to February 2022 in Chile (and their venue was very accommodating)!
We had chatted with these two in February (‘20) about their outfits and locations for their May Spring Engagement Session and they made sure that we included their favorite Lake Michigan beach in Michigan in the mix-! Because of the LATE Spring that we had here in the Midwest (with no leaves being on the trees up an hour away at their favorite beach in Michigan) AND the Pandemic (and Michigan being strict due to them having the 3rd most deaths) we ended up having to push their Engagement Session back 5 weeks from their first potential date/ 2 weeks after the last date we’d originally given them as an option for a “Spring” Engagement Session. Luckily we were still able to Legally photograph these two up in Michigan within May AND 3 weeks before the end of Spring, so we see it as a win-! The weather even dropped down to 60 degrees for their Engagement Session (instead of the 90 degrees that it’d been in our city/ state just 4 days prior), so it was nice, cooler Spring weather for them.
After all of the patience we all had to show waiting for the legal & leafy day that we were hoping for for their Spring Engagement Session, it was finally here-! The evening before we actually went up and scouted the other 2 locations for them to start at about 6 minutes from their favorite beach. We met these two at a great spot we found at the lake that ALSO included some nice woods, flowers, and a bridge and quickly got to know them better-! These two are very humble, intelligent, and have a great sense of humor-! They were SO easy-going with us as we went a little overboard with photos for hours and were so easy to photograph. Slowly along the way they told us their story of meeting at a Salsa night in South Bend and how they are coincidentally BOTH engineers from out of state and/ or country-!
One of the BEST things about our job & relationship is that we get to meet other couples who’ve made BIG moves for their education and career AND then stayed here in South Bend-! It’s so wonderful to be around those with different backgrounds and talk about life experiences. The different backgrounds, views, and perspectives that every person brings into a portrait session is fantastic, and really helps us have a great experience working with real people.
As you can see, the day ended up being gorgeous at all of their locations and we LOVE the images that we captured of these two for their Engagement Session-! Thank you so much, Coty & Justin for dealing with our shenanigans and so many locations-! We can’t wait to finish editing the rest of your photos over the next few days so you can see the full gallery-! (And we can’t wait to print your package photos for you-!!) You are such a fun, smart couple and we’re honored to have gotten to photograph you two a few days ago-!
__________
Unrelated: Coming up over the next few weekends of June 2020 we’ll be capturing the 10 person, short 2 hour legal weddings of a few of our couples who had already booked us in 2019, but had to move their big wedding days to late fall/ early winter 2020 OR to summer 2021 due to Covid-19. Coty and Justin would be having their wedding coming up in 9 months in Chile too had it not been for Covid-19 (instead opting for February 2022 to play it safe). We’re so glad that our couples are playing it safe, but will still be getting legally wed this summer with their closest loved ones in tow (around 10 to 20), with everyone masked up, everyone socially distanced, and with 4 or the 6 hours being outside. We plan on using brand new N95 masks sent to us from family (we’ve been using the same level 3 mask for months now) ALONG with nice black masks covering those so that we look presentable for the weddings, but also stay HEALTHY for ALL of our upcoming clients- including the massive weddings from August through December and of course summer 2021.
We’re still booking 2021 and 2022 weddings, though sadly for safety reasons aren’t having those Wedding Consultations in person in our Consultation Office here in South Bend. We’re instead opting for video chats with couples- something that we’ve already done for 10 years for clients who live over 2 hours away or Out of State. We cannot WAIT for the day when we can safely be in our Consultation Office with our couples or prospective couples AND for when we feel safe to be around strangers without a medical mask. Right now our priorities are to stay healthy for our couples (to not get they or their loved ones sick AND be able to stay healthy to get to photograph everyones’ weddings), stay healthy to get to meet Jenny’s new niece or nephew (potentially WITHIN the MONTH-!), and stay healthy to be able to care for our 3 pets. We hope that you’re all safe & healthy and Thank You for checking out this week’s Weekly Wednesday blog post-!!