Good morning, SouthBound brides… I have The Loveliest engagement shoot to share with you this morning! A couple of weeks ago, I noticed I’d had a new follow on Twitter from a photographer called Dear Wesleyann, who is based in Florida in the US. I happened to click through, and OMG, blog crush. I absolutely loved the style of Wesleyann’s website, but more importantly, I fell head over heels for her beautiful photographs. Which is saying something, considering how many lovely images I see every day. Her light, bright, clean and joyful style really appeals to me personally, and I soon got lost in her archives of pretty! I knew I had to share my special find with you, so I immediately fired off a mail to Wesleyann, who very kindly agreed to let me feature Tracie and Mark’s love letter-themed engagement. Eek! So that was the first exciting part. The next was when I read Tracie and Mark’s story, and why love letters are so important to their relationship and not just a nice prop – in fact, they incorporated the theme into their beautiful wedding as well. Bottom line? It adds up to one of my favourite e-sessions ever.

Bride Tracie is the sweetest, and she sent over some background on the shoot and on her and Mark’s relationship…
Although Mark and I met at the CrossFit gym initially, we didn’t date or get to know each other until about 8-9 months later. We went on a date and “hung out” a week before Mark left for Fort Sill for a two-month Army school. So we “dated” over good old fashioned love letters. That’s really how we fell in love. Mark and I wrote letters the first two months we started dating. We knew we loved each other by the time he came home!! We’ve often talked about how the letters really allowed us to get to know each other A LOT faster than if we had dated in person. The letters allowed us to be more open and honest with each other. Since then, we still write letters while he is away. In fact, Mark is gone right now and we are back to writing letters……I keep all of my letters in a box and pull them out from time to time so that I feel closer to him. It is fun to go back and read our initial conversations—so raw and pure.
So we felt it was only appropriate that we incorporated this theme into our wedding as well as our engagement photos. We actually used the letters we wrote each other those 1st two months in the photoshoot. For the wedding, we used vintage postcards/envelopes and letters tied together with mail boxes as decorations. The guest book was our friends and family writing letters to us on airmail stationery and then putting them in a homemade mail box that we created. Our vows were Dear… letters to each other.

Isn’t that just the loveliest? Big thanks to Tracie and Mark (and wishing Mark strength and safety in his time on active duty), and also to Wesleyann, who I really hope to work with again in future.