Lauren + Brandon’s Cedar Lakes Estate Engagement session

Cedar Lakes Estate Engagement session | Robert Norman Photography

 

Shortly after Christmas, Lauren texted me and asked if i’d be willing to drive up to Cedar Lakes Estate to take some wintertime photos of her and her boyfriend (now fiancé!) Having photographed ALL of her siblings weddings in the past naturally I was in!!

I know that they have a rather interesting story about how they met, so I asked Lauren to share their story…

 

Lauren says:

Although Brandon and I met his first night on Guam, it took three months before he officially asked me on a date. After a twelve hour night shift, we trekked through waist deep mud and climbed down a cliff side to a beautiful waterfall. We laughed our way through wrong turns and falls, and I tried my best to make dripping sweat look cute. We ended the date with the only restaurant open on Sunday in Guam, sushi. Between fumbling my chopsticks and giant bites of Vegas rolls, I’m really lucky he liked my personality…

 

 

 

Not many people get to fall in love on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere but we did. After just 2 and a half months, my time in Guam was up and we put and ocean and 15 hour time difference between us. We traded date nights for long hours on FaceTime. The pandemic put all our travel plans on hold and it was 6 months before I could make it back to Guam for a visit. We planned for a month long trip before I started graduate school but the universe had other plans. After about two weeks, my mom got sick very suddenly and I found myself changing my tickets to the first flight off island the next day. My mom passed away a few days later and Brandon was my rock through the days and weeks that followed…

 

 

Brandon was finally able to take leave in December and we planned to road trip together to visit his family in Buffalo. The day after we arrived, Brandon took me on hike. As we slid through the snow to a beautiful waterfall, I couldn’t help but laugh at the parallels to our first date. Instead of a first date though, this hike became the first day of the rest of our lives when Brandon proposed…

Brandon had originally planned to propose on my trip to Guam in July and asked my parents for their permission the night before my mom got sick. I feel so much comfort in knowing that my mom gave her blessing and knew the man that I will spend the rest of my life with. It took a lot of patience on Brandon’s part to finally get to this moment but I can hear my mom saying “good things come to those who wait” and, as always, she has never been more right.

 

 

Thank you both for sharing this afternoon with me (and for lunch!) Lauren – good luck in school and Brandon have a safe trip to Guam!