This engagement session was particularly special to me because Danna has been one of my closest friends since our freshman year at Franciscan University. We spent all four years together in the same group of girlfriends and all eight of us have stayed in close contact since graduation. Last September, Kelsey was the first of our group to get married and now it’s Danna’s turn to enter into this next stage of life. It has been so beautiful to watch my friends meet the loves of their lives and fall in love and it is such an honor to get to be the one to tell their love stories.

Danna and Teddy first met when a large group of us went to a Matt Maher concert near Pittsburgh in the fall of 2015. With many mutual friends and households located in separate wings of the same dorm, their paths began to cross frequently. However, it wasn’t until two years later, at the beginning of our senior year, that they finally realized they both felt the same way about each other and began to date. I remember quite vividly running into Danna on campus right after she came back from her first date with Teddy. She was giddy with excitement and so incredibly joyful as she told me about her first date with this man and how, maybe it was crazy to say this so fast, but she really truly already loved this man. A year and a half later Teddy spent hours searching for the random field they had found on their first date in the countryside of Ohio, the spot they had accidentally found and watched the stars from as they talked for hours and first began to fall in love with each other. They had never been quite sure where the field was and they had never found it again, however, Teddy finally found it and after enlisting the help of his household brothers and her household sisters, he planned the sweetest proposal complete with a twinkly light umbrella, champagne, and the most exquisite ring.

When Danna and I were talking about her vision for her engagement photos she said all she really knew was that she wanted lots of flowers. Franciscan’s campus has a beautiful array of flowering trees and so we decided to keep the location simple and use the place that brought them together. Teddy picked the flowers for Danna’s flower crown and put them in her hair himself right before they arrived for their engagement photos and it was the perfect touch.

Last weekend was nearing the very end of these cherry blossoms which meant that the petals would fall off with the slightest shake of the branches. I had envisioned pictures with the petals falling around them, however we didn’t have anybody else with us to shake the branches. But we were on Franciscan University’s campus, known for it’s amazingly kind and friendly, and in-love-with-love students, so I decided to ask the next student who walked by if they would mind being a branch shaker for us for a few pictures. As it turns out, the next student who walked by was a friend of Danna and Teddy’s (another plus of a small campus) so she was extremely excited and eager to help us out. These cherry blossom pictures are the things dreams of spring engagement sessions are made of.

After utilizing all the flowering trees on campus Danna and Teddy changed into their second outfit and we headed up to Franciscan’s “golf-course” for a few more casual images of them before the rain came. They wanted to wear each other’s household sweatshirts for this second part of their session (it’s a tradition of sorts that when you marry someone, you become a part of their FUS household). Danna also knew that she really wanted pictures on the tire swing out on the golf course. These two make anything and everything look absolutely adorable and these tire swing pictures are no exception.

Their wedding next summer is going to be BLAST and I cannot wait!

Xoxo,
Mary Kate