We were driving back from Noah’s Ark in Wisconsin Dells when my email alert went off on my phone. James was driving, so I grabbed my phone and pulled up my email to see who had written. It was an email from my Website Notifier (i.e. my contact page on my website… which is always fun… new clients – yay!)
I opened it immediately and found the following message:
Christy,
It’s Jon, Lana’s boyfriend. I’m planning on proposing on Sunday night. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner but do you think I could hire you to hide and take pictures when I actually pop the question? I apologize for submiting this online, had I thought of this sooner I would have stolen your number out of Lana’s phone. Give me a yell sometime this week, my cell is ***-***-****. Obviously, the strictest secrecy is needed. Oh, and I’m excited to hang out with you guys next week!
Jon
I gasped, and then screeched… and then yelled, OH MY GOD!!! James freaked out a bit (naturally, since he was driving & I was screaming) and asked me what on earth was wrong.
“Nothing is wrong!! Jon is going to propose to Lana when they are in town visiting next week!!!!!!!” – I screamed back at him.
You see, Lana is one of my oldest friends. I believe at this point I’ve known her for about half of my life (since I was 15… crazy!), and we’ve been through a lot together. She is one of the most kind, sweet, genuinely awesome people I know (and James thinks so too) – so when we met Jon for the first time last summer, I studied him very closely. But, it didn’t take long for me to see that he was PERFECT for Lana. For real. He won all of us over almost immediately, and had us hoping this was it for her. Turns out we were all right… it was!
So Sunday night James and I had the honor of witnessing one of our closest friends get engaged – and it was amazing! Even better was the scream she let out when she found out we were hiding in the bushes capturing the entire thing! 🙂 Love it!
After emailing back and forth to figure out the plan, Jon decided he wanted to propose at night at Buckingham Fountain… even if it meant I might not be able to get photos of it. He thought Lana would love that we were there regardless if we got photos or not. Of course I wasn’t going to let it go that easily and insisted that I would try my best to capture the whole thing – even in the darkness at 9:30pm. So these photos are a bit dark/grainy – but it was the best we could do and I’d say it worked out pretty well to capture the feel of the night. 🙂
Enjoy the photos from this beautiful Chicago surprise proposal at Buckingham Fountain!
(70-200mm lens, 6400 ISO, f2.8, 1/40 second, hand held – for the curious. And friends… don’t be mad… I had to keep it a secret!) 😉
