On October 5th 2014, Cody and I met with Carol Malick (our wedding photographer) to get our engagement pictures taken!
I knew that for our engagement pictures that I wanted to get my nails done. I was thinking about going to get a manicure, but I decided that I didn't want to ruin my nails with those kind of fake nails. So I went to Walgreens and I bought Kiss everlasting nails instead. I thought they were adorable!!
The morning of our engagement shoot I woke up extra early and headed out to North Ridgeville to see Hannah's little sister Sam. She helped me get my nails on and she did my hair and make up for me. This was super nice of her because she had been at homecoming the night before and was super sleepy. But I really appreciate her helping me out!
Cody and I barely left the house on time because I was running around doing last minute things. We had to be in Akron by 1pm. When we met Carol she had her assistant with her. It was a pretty chilly day in October when we went for the photo shoot. We met her at a Manor Care place that was actually very beautiful. We started by walking way out to this court house building to take a couple pictures against. The part that you can't tell in the pictures was that we actually had jackets with us. We would hand our jackets to her assistant, Carol would snap a couple quick pictures, we would get our jackets back on and walk to a new area.
We were just walking around and Carol would see a spot that she liked... we'd stop and snap a picture or two. Carol would have us pose in different positions. It was all very quick and pretty painless.
For some reason the pictures aren't transferring to my blog very well. I think that it because they have so much detail in them. If you look at them printed or on Facebook they look really nice.
Here we are at the Manor Care place. They had a whole pond with a water feature and this pretty bridge for the background.
We left that Manor Care place and stopped at a Walgreens down the road. Cody and I were confused on why we stopped there, but as we started walking we realized that some of the surrounding buildings had pretty cool backgrounds. Carol wanted to take this picture above to "tell a story." She said she thought it was funny how dollied up I was and that Cody had on his tennis shoes (I thought he looked awesome by the way).
And thanks to my maid of honor for this whole outfit! Hannah loaned me everything from the dress, white shawl, and shoes to me. I thought it was really cute and it matched my wedding colors. It was a very girly outfit.
After taking pictures against different buildings, Carol led us down an alleyway where there was a ton of graffiti. She told us to go ahead and keep our jackets on for these pictures, because they fit the theme of the area. You can't tell in the pictures but the walls had things written all over them. Carol's team photo shopped all of the dirty words out. There was also glass everywhere in the alley so we had to be really careful walking.
Honestly though... I think that the pictures from this area were some of my favorites of the whole session. This one is actually my Facebook profile picture now!
There was a platform above us that Carol could climb up to. So she got up there and took a couple pictures from above us. Something that I've learned from looking at all of the engagement pictures of Cody and I kissing... is that I pucker too much!!! I think that I look weird in all the kissy pictures. I'm glad I realized this now in our engagement pictures so that I won't pucker as much in our wedding pictures.
Here is another one of her taking it from above us. I like this one much more than the kiss one.
Another common pose that she asked us to do was to go nose to nose with each other. Here is a cute picture that we took in the middle of town. She took a picture on the opposite side through the water too, but it must not have turned out well because it didn't show up in our album.
After taking pictures in a couple of locations we actually changed outfits. We stopped at a McDonald's and changed. And to my horror one of my nails broke off!!! Luckily it was on my right hand so I could hide it. But I'll have to remember if I ever buy those nails again to bring the glue with me incase one falls off!! I didn't think there was any chance of that happening, because when Sam was putting them on me we actually had one on wrong that we wanted to take off. I had to soak it in nail polish remover and wait 20 minutes before I could barely scrap it off. I have no clue how this one just magically popped off.
These are pictures randomly around town.
This was in front of a vent.
I can't believe how much I look like my mom in this picture!!!
We parked right in the heart of downtown Akron and started walking around. There was a wall behind an apartment building with all of kinds of "drunk teletubbies" painted on it. This was actually a huge mural, but we only took a picture in front of one of them. It actually is a pretty interesting picture.
This was the building next to the mural. She told me to hop on Cody's back and have him twirl me around. I honestly did not think this was going to go well, but here we are mid-twirl. I think it turned out pretty cute.
Here was an old movie theatre in downtown Akron. She had us sit down and take a picture against the neat wood work. She told us at the time this picture was going to be in black and white, but I've only seen the color ones so far.
Here we are in front of the new Akron library. The architecture of all of the new libraries that are being built is so interesting. They are all such modern designs. She was going to have us sit down like the other picture, but there was gum everywhere so we stayed standing.
The best thing about being with Carol was that we were never in one location for a long time. We kept going to different areas and taking pictures in different spots. Here we are against a mural.
Then there was an area of all of these old buildings that we hopped onto and took some pictures.
It was really neat background.
She actually shot this picture through stairs.
This was one of my favorite pictures from the whole day. I think this one will end up framed. :)
Here are our mini save the dates (front and back) that came included in our package. The only downside was that we didn't get to choose the pictures that she used for them. The pictures that she selected were nice, but they probably wouldn't have been our first choices... but with that said they still look nice. They are pretty small though and don't say "save the date" on them. So I don't know what we are going to do with them. Maybe we'll just add them into the save the dates we buy or maybe we'll pass them out at the wedding? I don't know yet.
My favorite part of getting our pictures back was the slideshow that Carol made for us. I thought that it was awesome! Click on the link above to look at it. Overall, I think we had a really fun day with Carol. She is super sweet and I think we'll have a good time with her during our wedding. The photo session seemed to go quick and we got some nice photos out of it.
