December 15, 2015

Alex + Vanessa // Newport Beach Engagement

FILED IN: Engagements

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. Life has just been so crazy and we are trying to wrap up everything for 2015, but don’t worry I have lots of shoots and photos to share with you. It was so fun to reconnect with Vanessa after all these years! Vanessa and I were in National Charity League together in High School and an even smaller world we actually lived next door to one another as newborns…our mom’s were pregnant with us at the same time! When she contacted David and I to shoot her and Alex’s wedding I was so excited, and when she mentioned doing their engagement shoot on a sailboat I pretty much swooned! These photos in sunny Newport Harbor are such a big contrast to what I am looking at out my window right now…a winter wonderland of snow. With it being Christmastime I don’t mind, but come February I will be wishing I was aboard this boat sailing in Newport Beach!

Alex and Vanessa’s story is truly the work of fate. The way these two first crossed paths and instantly clicked sounds like it’s out of a movie. It was December 2007 at Reagan National Airport on a snowy wintry night. Alex had spent the semester in Washington DC working at the Department of Justice, and Vanessa was also in DC for her final year of law school. Alex’s flight to Chicago had been cancelled due to inclement weather, so he was bumped to a later flight. This flight just so happened to be the same flight Vanessa was scheduled to take to surprise her friends in Chicago at their annual Christmas party. When Vanessa arrived at the gate, she saw a handsome young man wearing a white ball cap talking to the pilot. When that handsome man sat down next to her, Vanessa immediately began peppering him with questions about the flight. Although other men may have found Vanessa’s rather aggressive approach off-putting, Alex was hooked and the two spent the next two hours sitting together at the gate, listening to music on Alex’s single set of headphones, and laughing.

When they finally boarded the flight, Alex asked the woman sitting next to Vanessa if she would mind switching seats so he could sit next to his new “friend.” She obliged, and Vanessa and Alex spent the entire 2-hour flight drinking tiny bottles of airline wine and really getting to know each other. Thereafter, they dated for an entire year long distance, and, later, after a brief hiatus and a big move for Alex from his beloved Chicago to sunny SoCal, the two soulmates reconciled in September 2013 when Vanessa returned to California from her stint in NYC. The rest is history!

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