The story of Sheena + Marty’s proposal and how we all met is one that I just adore. I got a phone call last April from a gentleman who said that his girlfriend had picked up my information at Toronto’s Bridal show. They weren’t engaged yet (Sheena plans ahead!), but she had made note that she loved my work and he was secretly calling me to arrange a photoshoot of his upcoming proposal. We chatted about his thoughts and Sheena’s list for “the perfect proposal” (yes…there was an actual list!), and I made a suggestion of a location that I thought would work well. Marty, Jon and I met at Edwards Gardens in secret one afternoon to tackle the master plan for the shoot later in May and to also record some secret interview footage for a video we were also going to create from the proposal. I helped him figure out how it was best to surprise her, where I need him to be and even our secret signal for the big moment. I’m not going to lie – I had SO MUCH fun helping plan this!
So, the plan all went down like this – Sheena always wanted some nice photos of the two of them to hang in their new home. Cue Marty hiring me after her trip to the Bridal Show as a surprise to her. Marty and I had to act like we had never met, and since Jon was filming video of this, we had to create a lie as to why he was also there for the shoot. Our lie was that Jon was filming footage of me for a “promo video” he was making for my website. Not a total lie, since we’ve been shooting footage for this for years (and no, it’s still not done). So we met Marty + Sheena and started the shoot as normal – me asking questions about them and learning about them as a couple (even though I already knew so much). At one point in the shoot, we had planned for Marty to give Sheena a little gift in front of the fountain. Sheena has a Pandora bracelet that has become a special part of their relationship. She has charms from different milestones, including when they got their first house together, and Marty was now giving her a charm of an engagement ring. We had no idea how Sheena would react to this, whether it was tears, confusion or if she would really clue in. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to think anything out of the ordinary was up..just that he was giving her a nice charm of a ring. We walked around and shot more photos to distract her, and then while shooting individual portraits of each of them, we got Marty to sneak up behind Sheena and get down on one knee. Sheena turned around and voila! Cue the tears! Marty hilariously put the ring on the wrong hand, but we can’t blame the guy for getting caught up in the moment! Thank you to Marty and Sheena for having us there and being part of this incredible new chapter!
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