The Knotty Bride™ Wedding Blog + Wedding Vendor Guide

PLEASE NOTE: This contest is now closed.

SO!

Happy August 1st, everybody!  And more specifically, happy Monday afternoon!  How was your weekend?  Pleasant?  Hot?  Did you see any movies?  We did; we saw that Justin Timberlake/Mila Kunis movie.  Friends with Benefits, I think?  Is that what it’s called?  Anyway I think I went into it expecting more, so I was aggressively disappointed.  It worked so hard at making fun of romantic comedies that it became its own worst nightmare… in my humble opinion, of course.  Anyone see it yet?  Am I, like, totes wrong about it/missing the point?  Anyway, Mila has a hot body.  How do I know?  Oh, only because it was 100% all over the movie screen 100% of the time.  Butt, boobies, tummy, butt, tummy, legs, chest, a$$, rinse, repeat.  A little of JT’s tushie crept in there, too… and I gotta say… not exactly my cup of tea?  Personally – and I may be unique on this front…? – but I prefer it when baby got at least a little back.  Ifyaknowwhatimean.

ANYWHO… so we ran this little engagement shoot giveaway contest recentlyesque, remember?   Well, we’ve arrived at stage two.  Woot!!!  Now, you may be asking, what’s stage two?  Stage two is the almighty voting process.  With your vote, we’ll get one huge step closer to seeing something super creative come to fruition and very likely featured on TKB!  So it’s up to you to make the decision.

VOTING:

Here’s a more specific rundown of how this is going to work.  Below you’ll find all three finalists and their corresponding ideas and proposal stories.  (If you’re a finalist, congrats and good luck!)  After you’ve scoped out the three finalists, you can go ahead and vote for your favorite up to two times per day.*  If you’re a finalist, you can vote for yourself up to two times as well, and we encourage you to enlist your family and friends to vote (up to two times per person) for you, too!  Yeah, I know, it’s awesome.  But wait, there’s more!

We just added each of our finalists’ photos to an album on our Facebook page as well.  If you vote by clicking “Like” beneath one of our finalists’ photos, this counts as another vote, so essentially a single person can vote three times for his/her favorite!  Awesomesauce.

*VOTING CLOSES this week on Friday, August 5th, 2011 at 9AM PST.

… Now.  I’m warning you, it’s going to be tough to choose, because I fell deeply in love with all three of these finalist couples.  Such creative folk, all deserving of this free engagement shoot gift.  P.S. – Cameron Leung Photography, the photography giver awayers fell in love with all of them, too.  Well, that’s false; they fell in love with each and every one of the contest entries, but we forced them at virtual gunpoint – there’s an app for that – to make a decision on their three favorites, based of course on their shoot ideas/proposal stories.  And now, without further adieu…

Here’s who they chose as their three finalists…

Leighann + Caitlyn

SHOOT IDEAS:

1. We are very recently engaged so I haven’t put much thought into ideas for a shoot (“much thought” is a subjective phrase). A couple of essential ingredients include outdoors, sunshine, books, perhaps a barn or ranch setting. C’s family owns 65 acres of bare land in Northern San Diego County off in the mountains. During cooler months, the fields are overrun with poppies and brightly colored flowers.
2. A fun fact about me – I’m obsessed with all things sugar packed! I love candy, cake, ice cream, etc. so incorporating that into a shoot would be a ton of fun! Especially if I get to eat it all after and drive everyone nuts with my sugar high!
3. Lastly (for this post at least), Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills where Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman was filmed would be a great location. I was on the show as an extra for a short time when I was young and to be able to relive some of that experience would be amazing! I would love to actually get married there but sadly they don’t do night weddings.
4. Now the wheels are really spinning! I really like the idea of water, but not the ocean. A lake or pond shoot with a row boat at sunset would blow my mind. Maybe a duck and her chicks to add to the mix.
5. E-sesh Idea #3498345635: Books, books and more books. C is an English major and wants to be a professor, in addition to working for the library conservation center at UCLA. Our goal is to have our own mini library large enough to require a rolling wall ladder. Incorporating words, books, book pages and the like would be awesome. Perhaps in the middle of a desolate field or tree filled woods-y area.

P.s. the proposal went just as planned. However, she did unintentionally try to ruin it by asking if we really had to go all the way to the beach for brunch. I insisted and once we were there, she brought up our first date. It was really hard not to just bust out with the ring and the book I made her but I held off until we were sitting on the beach. Happy tears ensued.

PROPOSAL STORY:

Warning… i’m not messing around, I take my giveaways seriously ha! So put your reading glasses on!

The proposal story… Dun dun dunnnn

In January I planned a camping trip to the Sequoia National Forest for Memorial Day weekend (we’re not crunchy hippies, I swear) with a group of our best friends. We set off for what we thought was going to be a fun filled weekend of hiking and s’more making but as we drove further up the mountain, I started seeing little patches of snow here and there. By the time we pulled into the campsite, EVERYTHING was covered in snow. It was only May 28th, not like it’s almost summer or anything! The second day of the trip started out rough, it had snowed ALL night and the roads were closed. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hike in the snow, but falling on your *ss in the snow isn’t like falling onto a cloud like one would think, quite the opposite. With nothing to do, C asked me if I wanted to go on a walk. I said “sure” and off we went. We found ourselves on what appeared to be a mini-meadow covered in snow that butted up to the seriously raging river along the campsite. I got as close to the water as I could just to take in the amazing site. Snow was stuck on every little branch, leaf, rock in sight… I had never seen anything like it. As I turned around to walk back to her, she looked at me as if she was falling in love with me all over again. At this point, the wheels in my head started to spin. I immediately started crying and in turn, so did she. I could tell she had a head full of sweet things she wanted to say, but all that came out between her tears of happiness was “I love you, will you marry me?”

Let me tell you, I am one with words. I think it took me a good minute and a half to say yes. My exact response, “I haven’t even said yes! Duh, yes!” I was so caught up in the emotion and what was happening that I hadn’t even thought to answer. I guess I just assumed that we both knew it was a yes.

We stood there, in the snow, freezing, in silence and just smiled and loved each other uncontrollably. It was like the earth stood still for that very moment. I no longer heard the roaring river in back of me, I hadn’t even noticed that the clouds had parted ways and kindly let the sun shine on us for that 4 or 5 minutes we were standing there (my friend later told me). Sigghhhhhhh it was amazing!

As we walked back to our campsite, I could see our friends waiting for us, champagne bottles in hand. We all poured a glass of champagne, huddled around the fire pit and toasted to love and amazing friends.

It was a perfectly executed plan. Unbeknownst to me, C had bought a ring weeks prior and told our friends what the plan was. I didn’t think she had it in her to be this sneaky… just goes to show that you learn new things about your partner ever day, even 3 ½ years after your first date.

I always envisioned myself being the one to propose. I am perfectly happy with the way our relationship has evolved, but I want her to feel as special as she makes me feel. That being said, I.can’t.help.myself. I’m actually proposing to her this weekend. I had a custom ring made for her that just arrived yesterday afternoon. We are basically going to relive our first date (unbeknownst to her). Brunch at a restaurant on the beach, followed by hours of conversation in the sand. I made a little book for her reminiscing over the past 3 plus years and the last page is the proposal. She actually repairs and preserves old books in her current job while she finishes school so it’s perfect!

So that’s muh story! Hope you made it this far :)

Shayna Marie + Ryan

SHOOT IDEA:

1. I’ve always been pet friendly and want to include our pets in our photos! we each had our own cat before we got together and made our own adopted family when we combined the two ( which got along great!) i’d love to incorporate our feline “children” somehow! since i never see and kitties on photo shoots!
2. I would Also like a shoot that would be vintage themed. My ring and the ring box he purchased separately were all vintage in setting and age so something with an elegant vintage scene would be awesome!
3. Another Idea would to have some type of lasers involved…yes lasers! my fiance would absolutely LOVE to have something futuristic!

PROPOSAL STORY:

My proposal was absolutely beautiful and almost absolutely ruined by yours truly! :) During our third year anniversary we stayed in my favorite place to travel, Monterey CA and spent our actual anniversary in San Francisco enjoying the food and sights. On our “Last Day” in monterey we decided to take a trip up to 17 Mile Drive. During the drive we made several stops to take photos with his “new” tripod. After several pictures we had the timing down and we were able to get great photographs without a picture of him running to be by my side in time. During one particular photo session, and myself being bored of taking pictures, I noticed that the camera wasn’t blinking to notify us that it was counting down till the camera would snap a photo. Little did I know at the time it was actually recording. He was ignoring my incessant “It’s Not Blinking! HELLO! It’s NOT BLINKING!!!” Needless to say we have a fun video of him putting his hands in his pocket to retrieve the ring and me in the back ground yelling at him :). He decided that it wasn’t going to happen at that location so we continued on our journey through 17 Mile Drive all the while I was still not clued in to his intentions. We were finally almost ending 17 Mile Drive when he suddenly flips the car around and speeds off back towards the ocean. By this time I am about ready to fall asleep :). He said that he wanted to take a picture of us off of pebble beach and I lazily walked down the sand covered steps to the non populated beach. He told me to look out at the ocean so we could get an “in the moment” photo ( that was code for “so you don’t ruin it and yell at me to fix the “non-Blinking” camera!) There he pretended to take a photo with me and nervously got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. He got the whole proposal on video and we were able to share the most special moment of our lives with our closest family and friends to announce our engagement! We wound up spending another day in Monterey at a secluded private bungalow beach hotel so that we could just enjoy our engagement together in our Favorite place!

Emily + Brandon

SHOOT IDEAS:

1. should for sure involve the beach we are beach rats
2. maybe involve our blackberrys or laptops since we are always on them
3. should involve BEER and yum-o food!

PROPOSAL STORY:

The long awaited proposal….

It was a COLD ( well cold by san diego standards ) afternoon at work when my fiancee texted and said ” meet me and my mom at STONE for dinner” nothing out of the ordinary for us. We love beer and good food! Stone has both, so to me seemed like a logical way to spend the firday evening and bonus my future mother in law was going to be there as well. ( or so i thought)

I was supposed to get off work at 5 ( i am a preschool teacher) so at 4 i texted my fiancee and said i think i might get off early i will be there no later than 5…well i ended up talking to another parent, my director and then getting lost on the way..i got there much closer to 6. My poor fiancee had been sitting there alone for an hour waiting and waiting…
When i arrived i texted him to find out where in the resturant they were sitting, he said he would come meet me up at the bar, again nothing weird. As we were walking i ofcourse was textin on my blackberry, updating my twitter, and answering an e-mail to my mom, not paying attention at all…walked right passed a bright pink sign that said ” reserved for brandon” with a big heart never noticed! as we walked into the picnic are we were sitting my fiancee behind me i asked ” where is your mom? ” to which he responded ” she is not here” to which i became super pissed, because we should not be out spending money for no reason! as i turned around to yell at him fro bringin me out in the cold on a day i had been puked on at work with no shwoer and his mom is not even there…

he was down on one knee…no clue what he said from that point except he did say..” and now you have to answer me” to which i said “yes!”  the rest is history!

So… pick your fave!  You can either choose only one, or list your picks in order of preference – 1 = FAVE, 2 = 2nd place, 3 = 3rd place.  Yeah I probably didn’t need to explain that.

xoxo!  – Alison

Fun Fact: Our vendors are hot on offering up their services for free this year.  Lots of them.  So, uhhh, yeah, can’t wait to launch the next contest… and the next… and the next… but vote on this one first before we move on to another great giveaway! *smooch*

Cameron Leung Photography is a member of Vendor Love, The Knotty Bride’s Preferred Vendor Guide. To view this listing, click here.

Label(s): Contests + Giveaways, {Engagement}