Young & In Love
When my brother David approached me about proposing to his girlfriend, I immediately had a million and one ideas of things we could do... After throwing every idea I had at him, we were able to narrow it down to an intimate, romantic picnic. My brother than gave me his blessing to run with it and do what I thought would be best.
I began with a mood board. I knew right away that a picnic on the water would be so good! At first I thought about doing it on a small row boat, but then thought that it probably wasn't the best idea to pull out a ring while on a boat and in the water. So I scratched that idea (they did end up doing that for their engagement photos though, so a great idea did not go to waste!), and began to look for a location with a beautiful dock on a quiet lake. After driving through what seemed like almost all of Minnesota, it hit me when I was driving home that I live next to a very beautiful marsh that would work perfectly. I pulled into a driveway and knocked on the door and a sweet older woman opened the door. I introduced myself as someone who lives in the neighborhood and awkwardly asked if they would be open to the idea of letting strangers use their beautiful yard for a proposal. Luckily, she said yes!
After we had the location figured out, I used the scenery as inspiration for the set up. The land was so green and luscious, I knew I had to play into that. I used gold as the accent color and the rest was greens and whites. I used some wooden pallets to make a small table, covered it with some sheer white cloth and put together some small floral arrangements with white roses, hydrangeas and baby's breath. I also put together a small charcuterie board, and used my white Salad Plates, Champagne Flutes, White&Gold Flatware, Sage Napkins and Gold Cheese Knives to finish the table scape.
With the help of my now sister in law's best friend, Katie, we set everything up as fast as possible and then ran to hide in the bushes, all while tracking their iPhones to see how soon they would arrive. Not too long after, we saw David and Milana walking towards us. Milana was completely oblivious and was not suspecting a thing, and still wasn't too sure of what was going on even when Katie and I ran out of the bushes with cameras.
What a beautiful thing to see a young love play out in front of your eyes. To see the excitement and joy of a young couple realizing that they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other... its an excitement like no other. Many happy tears were shed that day.
Congratulations to David & Milana. I love you both so much!