So a lot of you have been asking me when I’ll be sharing this proposal on the website and well – the time has come! I’ve been bragging about this day like I was the one that got engaged. It doesn’t make sense to me either but I think it’s because we pulled off the hardest surprise of all time. Maggie is not an easy person to hide things from, she’ll drill you with questions until you’re sick of them and then some more. She’s been trying to figure out how and when Auston will propose for months and every time we had to dodge the question and say it won’t happen anytime soon. We went through all the hoops to make sure that she wouldn’t find out. So if you want to read the whole thing from my perspective continue on – if not… just jump down to the photos and you’ll feel all the emotions.

1. Auston reaches out to me MONTHS ago to ask when I’ll be home for winter break. Something Maggie really wanted was for Alex and me to be at her proposal (which we had no idea she wanted). She was adamant about it so he obliged and tried to find a date that would work for all of us. At that time, I didn’t realize that he was going to propose or thinking about it at all. I just thought he wanted to hang out at Troegs as we always did when we were all around.

2. I visit Maggie and she tells me that Auston and her have been talking about getting engaged within the next year. This is when I start putting the pieces together and figured he would propose to her when we hang out in December but I didn’t mention it to Maggie. At this point, I was just waiting to see if he was going to ask me to break out my camera to photograph the moment.

3. I was driving home from a photo session when Auston FINALLY calls me and asks me if I’d be willing to photograph the proposal and this is how the plan formulated. It was about two months out from the day we were going to do it. He wanted us to pretend like we were having a photo session so that I could use the photos for advertisement purposes and in the middle of the shoot he would get down on one knee and propose. I figured that wasn’t enough and suggested instead that I would need them to model for a video advertisement that my friend Sarah (@earthandairfilms) would be able to put together for me. This way they would be able to also have video footage fo the entire day and help trick Maggie into believing she was only doing me a favor. We also included Alex in this shoot so that I would be able to have a portrait and couple session captured while also having her present for the proposal, hehe.

4. Up until the day of the engagement Maggie asked a million and one questions trying to figure out when Auston would do it. Auston and I were texting back and forth setting up plans but then I would text Maggie to pretend that she was the one making all of these decisions. It was a headache, but a masterful one in my opinion. Auston had to tell Maggie that he hadn’t talked to her parents yet. Alex and I had told Maggie we hadn’t been asked about a ring. Up until the day before the proposal, Maggie was still clueless. We really were about to pull this off.

5. The day before the proposal we went shopping while Auston snuck the ring into my bookbag so Maggie wouldn’t find it. On the day of, we started off in a woodsy area to take some portraits. We were hoping the more locations the more thrown off she would be. After the woods, we went to Little Amps Coffee Roasters on State Street to warm up but also take some photos. We had an outfit change here. We began heading to the Capitol, this is where things got tricky. Alex and Sarah were supposed to pull Maggie ahead so that Auston could take this time to pull out the ring but she KEPT lingering so we continued to find reasons to stay behind until she crossed the street and headed towards the capitol so that Auston could take the ring out. Once we got to the capitol steps, I made sure Maggie would stay away from Auston because he hid the ring in his back. I did everything I could to get her to stay away from him – like taking BTS photos/videos for me.

6. THE MOMENT – I told them to stand in front of the Christmas tree on the capitol steps, hold hands, and look at each other. I told Auston to begin saying sweet things about Maggie – something to make her blush… and that’s when the moment happened. I was crying while photographing it all.