Meenah & Shaobo live in Norcal and booked me after a meeting on Skype, so I was super excited to meet them in person for the first time at their engagement session! For their session, they suggested a sweet seaside beach picnic, complete with lots of pops of color and fun beachy activities. I’ve seen picnic engagement sessions before but never on a beach - I love the summery casual feel the sand & the sea lent to this session!

They drove down to LA with a car full of colorful candies (confetti-inspired shots galore!), bubbles, sodas, and two of the loveliest fabric kites I had ever seen, handcrafted beautifully by Meenah. They didn’t quite fly, but with the general selection of Batman/pirate/the Hulk-themed kites out there, this was an excellent decision of form over function :)

I loved this fun summertime session & am SO excited for their beautiful vineyard wedding this fall!

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When Elisa mentioned incorporating her love of reading into their session, 2 images immediately popped into my head - one was of them standing among stacks & stacks of vintage books, a million feet tall, looming all around them like crazy book-skyscrapers. The second vision was them laying on a blanket, with tons of books again, except this time they were swimming in them. Either way, I figured we would need a googelplex of books.

So the next couple weeks were spent collected hardcovers, coming across gems from the 1940s from my dad, with the corners of the pages all brittle & yellow, and the prettiest collection of novels {those would be all the pastel ones you see} from Scott’s mom. I was seriously driving around town with bags & bags & bags of books in my car and it sort of made me crazy excited that I pretty much was in a mobile library & at any given time I could just stop and read them ALL (didn’t happen, but exciting nonetheless). And though, by the time the session came around, we didn’t end up with quite enough books to tower 18 stories above Elisa & Andrew or to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, I was quite super giddy with the more realistic versions of brainstorming that we brought to life!

But Elisa must have figured that super giddy wasn’t quite giddy enough, because she had a second genius idea up her sleeve. She brought to the session a handcrafted GIGANTIC red heart kite. A kite. That was a red heart. That she put together, WITH HER HANDS. It was perfect & combined with Elisa & Andrew’s super sweet & silly personalities, it made for the funnest of fun photos. GIDDY X 1000!

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Where to start? I always encourage couples to personalize their engagement session, think of something unique, bring a prop or two… but Dawn & Craig took it to an entirely different (and amazingly wonderful) level!

In our email exchanges, Dawn sent me the idea of a vintage picnic session that combined all of their favorite things, and we immediately took off on a mad brainstorming session. The result had me giddy with excitement - the perfect sun-kissed location, a picnic basket (complete with a baguette!), vintage sodas, books, cupcakes from Frostings (links to a wonderfully written review by Dawn), and a bouquet of bright yellow flowers. The finishing touch was their custom-made bicycles - Craig goes biking daily and they have over 15 (fifteen!) at their home (as Dawn puts it, the bikes multiply like rabbits). It was fun to bond over bikes since Scott custom-made both his and mine as well, but Dawn and Craig definitely have us beat with their collection!

From our very first meeting, where Dawn and I chatted about folding cranes (she’s folding 1000 for the wedding!), our shared hapa roots, travel, music, and food (Dawn & Craig met working at Roy’s - what a deliciously romantic way to meet!), I felt like they would be the perfect couple for us, and can’t WAIT for their wedding in December! It’s going to a beautiful and fresh wintery-wonderland affair!

Special thanks to Ruffled for featuring this session!