Retha and Darius // Engaged

I got an email from Darius a couple of weeks ago. In it, he told me that because his fiance Retha had become overwhelmed by everything they had to do for their wedding, he was trying to help her out by taking over some of the tasks. His job? Get their engagement session scheduled! I thought that was so sweet, and I love that the involvement of the groom is becoming so much more common these days. In fact, when I met up with them on Monday, Retha informed me that Darius has had more than a few strong opinions about how their wedding should go down. Even though that might be driving HER nuts, I think it’s pretty awesome. I mean, what would you expect from a guy who has “esquire” in his email address? Mad style, am I right?

I remembered Retha from the bridal show I did, and she was SO enthusiastic about my work, and then she ended up winning a gift card in my drawing on the blog not long after that. What was hilarious is that she told me that Darius has become such a devoted blog stalker follower that he called her up to tell her almost as soon as I posted the news, before even *I* could email her to tell her less than an hour later. Ha! LOVE IT.

This makes sense though, because there is much debate on how their relationship actually got started. They met online, and Retha insists that Darius was stalking her, while of course Darius insists that Retha was stalking him. But either way (and I suspect it was a little bit of both!), they ended up hitting it off. Darius lives here in Birmingham, and Retha just recently moved here from Atlanta to be with him. Even though they flipped a coin about who would move and Darius won, Retha is using her move here as an opportunity to open up her own bakery, which I think is amazing. Apparently she makes a mean carrot cupcake, but I think I’ll have to taste test to be sure. ;)

Anyway, these two are just awesome, and I had so much fun spending the afternoon with them. I feel like I get to photograph the coolest people on the planet.

So as I was setting up this next shot, I noticed that Darius was TOTALLY checking Retha out and I told her so. She whipped around and said something to the effect of “you better not be ruining our engagement pictures.” HA!

So sweet. These two definitely know how to make each other laugh. Retha’s dry sense of humor is RIGHT up my alley. :)

We popped in Charlemagne Records for bit, because Darius had loved the shoot I did there with Amber.

So fierce! I totally cracked up because as soon as I said I wanted to take individual shots of them, Darius got all excited and started prepping for his close up. Esquire, indeed! :)

Perfect way to end the day.

Thank you guys so much for such a fun time!