Say "cheese!"

Last Saturday morning, at the wee early hours of 9:00am, Joseph, Bailey, and I jumped in my car and rushed over to Maclay Gardens for our engagement photo session (I say rushed because we were supposed to be meeting our wedding photographer AT 9:00am, NOT leaving my apartment at 9:00am - thank goodness I pretty much live across the street from Maclay Gardens and we were only 5 minutes late). We made it over to Maclay and met our photographer - Jenna Reichert - for the first time. I first emailed Jenna way back when Joseph and I first got engaged in May 2010. Jenna was just starting out professionally back then and was recommended to me by a friend so I checked her out of course and sent her an email, introducing myself and finding out if she'd work with us. We didn't have a wedding date back then and she was willing to be flexible with us until we did, me thinking all the while we would have one within weeks. Well, 10 months later Joseph and I FINALLY decided on a wedding date (thanks to the long awaited release of the FSU football schedule) and I IMMEDIATELY emailed Jenna to see if she was still available and found out I was VERY lucky because she was for the date we picked out. Over the past 10 months I have blog-stalked Jenna and ohhed and ahhed over the projects she has done and have fallen in love with her photographic style. She is soo talented and I am so thankful I found her and snatched her up when I did! So anywho, while I feel like I have known Jenna for a long time, we had never technically met until last weekend. And she turned out to be even better in person than I imagined! Our whole photo shoot was like we were taking photos with a really good friend who would just happen to tell us what to do and where to stand every now and then!

We decided to have our engagement photos taken at Maclay Gardens not just because of the beautiful scenery - its where Joseph proposed to me! But its in an area of Maclay Gardens that many people may not know exists and thats where we got started with our session last Saturday. I wanted to get some pictures in the spot where Joseph got down on one knee which meant we had a little bit of a hike ahead of us but Jenna didn't mind one bit and we talked along the way and stopped to take pictures wherever Jenna found a good spot.

We finally made it to the dock where Joseph popped the question and Jenna worked patiently with us and Bailey, who tried once to make a run for it into the lake!

This was the gator we saw along the way, which was kind of ironic because we saw a gator the day Joseph proposed!

After getting some really great shots along the trails, we made our way back to the gardens as the sun got higher in the sky. By this time, the parking lot was packed and there were people everywhere in the gardens, enjoying the warm weather and beautiful flowers. Bailey was picked up by her Auntie Lindsay and Joseph and I cleaned up a little and did a quick wardrobe change and began the second part of our shoot in the gardens.

This is one of my all time favs!

LOVE!



Two and a half hours and many smiles and photos later, we were done! I couldn't believe how fast the time flew and that is was already almost noon! Joseph tried to shake Jenna's hand good-bye and she said nonsense and gave us both a big hug! I enjoyed working with her so much and am so happy to have her as our photographer! I cannot wait to see what she does on our wedding day!

Then on Wednesday night (I think), I went to my room after dinner and watching tv and found like 10 text messages from all my friends telling me how beautiful my engagement pictures are! I got so giddy and excited to find Jenna had already posted some of our engagement pictures online! I knew she was working on a couple other projects and that it might take a few days before she'd beable to have ours posted for viewing but I had no idea she would have them up so fast! And I am so happy with the results! All of the pictures turned out beautifully (if I do say so myself) and it has been so tough to just pick ONE for our save the date cards. Thank you, again, Jenna for doing such a wonderful job! And if you would like to check out more of Jenna's work, look here: http://jennareichertphotography.com/ :)