Being a wedding photographer, I have heard HUNDREDS of engagement stories. HUNDREDS.

I have seen some of my friends get engaged, watched hours of flashmob proposals on YouTube, and even photographed one or two.

But my favourite one is still MINE.

Before I dive into it, let me set the stage.

A week before, on October 31 I was preparing to dye my hair BLUE to go as Katy Perry for Halloween (Ben was going as Left Shark). Ben KNEW he was going to propose the next week, but didn’t bother saying anything about not going through with it … or just using the crappy blue wig that I bought at Value Village… He just LET ME. On a positive note, we won a costume contest that we didn’t know we were entered in!

Anyways… It was a cold November morning and Ben had set up a family photo shoot with our dogs, Bailey and Steele, for later that morning. I had spent the week since Halloween doing renovations in my house with my mom. I took probably a half hour off that morning to do my hair, throw on some mascara, and get ready. I ended up wearing a big floppy hat anyways!

On our way to the photoshoot we stopped at Starbucks because I was like, “Oh yes it’ll be *sooo* cute”. But Ben chugs his drinks so he was just carrying around garbage, ha-ha! Towards the end of the photoshoot, we were standing on a bridge at Festival Place. Ben seemed to make a motion to the photographer taking our photos to come over.

He pulled out the ring from his jacket pocket and got down on one knee. I don’t think he even ASKED me anything and I was already crying and nodding and pulling him up off the ground. I was a bit of a mess. I was so emotional and couldn’t stop crying. We finished up the photoshoot, despite me being all red eyed and puffy faced.

When we were done, we exchanged pleasantries with a few bystanders and a congratulatory hug from our photographer. Picked up our dogs’ leashes and Ben says, “Okay let’s go home and pack… After we have lunch with Nick!” WHAT?! “Pack for what?!” I’m crying again. “Oh, we are going to Vegas for the weekend!”