Snowy Engagement Session at Gold Creek Pond | Tina + Luke

March 25, 2021

I am so excited to share an overload of my favorite images from Tina and Luke’s recent snowy engagement session at Gold Creek Pond out in Snoqualmie. Despite the cold, we spent the entire session laughing together and capturing all the sweet and candid moments you could want from an engagement session. As photographers who can only take on so many weddings in a year, Michael and I have to be selective with our couples. Tina and Luke are of those special couples! It was effortless to feel like instant friends once we got to meet each other in person for the first time!

How They Met

Tina and Luke first met while in undergrad at the University of Washington. There, Tina was a freshman and Luke was a senior. While taking a class together, Tina’s sister introduced Tina and Luke. They ended up sitting next to and studying together for that class. A fun tidbit about their story: Luke was supposed to be a wingman for his friend who took an interest in Tina. As fate would have it, Luke and Tina became good friends until Luke got Tina agree to go on a date with him. Seven years later and here they are only months away from becoming husband and wife!

The Proposal

Hearing the story of Luke’s proposal when the three of us first met virtually last year and experiencing it again typed out brings the biggest smile to my face. I don’t think my words can even compare to how well Tina and Luke tell their proposal story. With that said, keeping reading to hear about the night they got engaged in their own words!

In Tina’s Words:

I was back in Washington visiting family for the holidays, so Luke and I planned to go on a date. He had a coupon for a ballroom dancing class, so he coerced me into wearing a dress and getting my nails done for the class. (Not sure why this detail didn’t clue me in on what’s happening, but I guess you could say I’m pretty dense).

After the class, I was hungry and ready to go home, but then he told me he had to drop off a cello at the UW Newman Center before he took me home. So he drives us over there and he gets out of the car with the cello and waits for me to get out. But I’m hungry and tired so I tell him that I’ll just wait inside the car. But he stands his ground and is really adamant about me going inside the church with him, so I finally give in and get out of the car, albeit rather annoyed.

We go inside the church and it’s nicely decorated with lights strung up along the pews, which I assumed they did so because of Christmas. All of a sudden, music turns on and I panic, thinking we’re interrupting a service. But then I listen more intently at the music before I figure out it’s a love song (“I love you 3000” by Stephanie Poetri). At that point, I start panicking even more, so I turn to Luke and say “we should get out of here!!” because I think someone is going to propose there. But then he turns to me and says “wait… we should check out the pictures”. Confused, I ask “what pictures??”, so I turn back at the church and saw pictures hung up along with the lights that I didn’t notice before.

I walked up to the pictures and saw it was of Luke and I… and THAT was when it finally clicked that he was going to propose to me. Nervous, I start laughing and tell him how stupid he is (he’s not *that* stupid, but that was all my brain could think to say at the shock of it all). So we spend some time looking through the pictures up the aisle before he sits me down at a chair that was set up in front of the altar.

He sits down in the chair across from me, picks up a ukulele, and starts singing a song to me (he wrote it himself, but it’s sung to the tune of “We Could Happen” by AJ Rafael). After he’s done, he tells me to pick a pokeball placed on a music stand between us. I pick one, and he stands me up, gets down on one knee, and opens the pokeball with the ring inside, asking me to marry him.

Luke’s addition:

During the drive, Tina got a papercut and started being dramatic so I asked her which finger she cut. And she said her left ring finger. I started freaking out and demanded her to see it but she just paused and said “ok its not that big of a deal, I was just being dramatic…” but I looked at it anyway and it was fine, but wow a papercut turned into a heart attack.

Snowy Engagement Session at Gold Creek Pond

Keep scrolling to see my favorites from Tina and Luke’s Gold Creek Pond engagement session in the snow. These two tie the knot this July starting with a traditional tea ceremony, a ceremony at St. Stephen the Martyr Catholic Church, and a reception in Seattle. We can hardly wait for their wedding day!!!

XOXO,

Stormy