Last weekend I drove down to Charlottesville, VA to meet Paola & Matt at the University of Virginia for their engagement session. The trees all over the grounds of UVA were in their peak and I was in fall heaven. The overcast skies simply made the oranges and reds pop even more and added for some fun drama in some of the wider angle portraits. It was truly a perfect setting for a fall engagement session!

Although they both live in DC now, Paola and Matt first met at UVA and it was very important to them to have their engagement session at the place that first brought their worlds together. Despite knowing one another while at UVA, there was never a hint of a romance between them and no feelings ever expressed for each other while they were students (although Matt confessed that he did work up the courage to call Paola “admirable” at one point which she took as a very platonic compliment and nothing more. 😉 ).

After graduation, Paola moved to DC and Matt stayed at UVA to get his masters and they lost touch. But as life would have it, a few years later, Matt moved to DC after completing his masters and they reconnected in the DC young adult world.

This next part of their story completely cracked me up: after reconnecting in DC and rekindling their prior friendship, Paola tried to set Matt up with almost all of her single girlfriends before realizing that she and Matt were actually the perfect match. All of this finally lead to this past summer when Matt proposed in the middle of a vineyard in VA (so many brownie points in the romance department) and they began to plan to spend the rest of their lives together.

These two know how to laugh and have fun and their joy is evident throughout their photos. I had such a blast getting to know them and photograph them and I am so pumped for the wedding next year!

Shout out to the random UVA students that helped make all of mine and Paola’s fall dreams come true by throwing leaves in the air for the next portrait!

Xoxo,
Mary Kate