Colorado Springs Engagement Photography

Colorado-Springs-Engagement-PhotographyColorado Springs Engagement Photography – Dianna & Matt

It was a lovely afternoon driving to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs with Dianna and Matt for their engagement session! They were so much fun to work and were smiles the entire time! I am SO excited for Dianna & Matt! They are two amazing people and I cannot wait for their wedding this fall! I first met Dianna when she was working as the wedding coordinator at Wild Basin Lodge in Allenspark, CO. It was always such a joy to work with her! So, of course I was stoked when she emailed me about photographing her wedding!

Here are some of my favorites from their session…

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A little more about Dianna and Matt’s love story…

Boy meets girl:
We met in College, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.  We both became members of Alpha Phi Omega (APO), a co-ed service fraternity.  We were both very involved with the organization and went on many conferences to other colleges over the years.  We carpooled for a conference at Saint Louis University and got to know each other a little bit more during that time.  We both became very involved with the animal rescue organizations.
They fall in love:
We knew each other a couple years before we started dating.  I was actually majoring in nursing when we first met and it wasn’t until about the last year and a half of college that I decided to switch majors to Mass Communications-Advertising/Marketing.  Nursing really did not seem like the right career choice for me, and I knew there was something more fitting out there.  When I switched majors, I had numerous classes with Matt.  We had even more in common when it came to class, APO and volunteering at the same service projects.  I knew he liked me before we started dating but I was not sure about my feelings towards him.  As we went on more dates, I became more aware we were meant to be.  We soon both volunteered every weekend with Partners 4 Pets, a no kill animal rescue.  Matt was renting a house that allowed pets, so we started fostering dogs.  Over the span of 2 years, we fostered 23 dogs (1 of which we eventually adopted ourselves after he was found in a pound again).  We attended a regional conference for APO in Fort Collins in January.  It was 50-60 degrees, no snow, sun all day and we began to wonder why we were in Illinois.  Coming from the Chicago area, I am a big critic of pizza.  Our first night in Fort Collins, we ate at Beau Jos and I fell in love.  We also went to this amazing little frozen yogurt place, that is now closed sadly.  I knew if Colorado cold make good pizza, have this kind of winter weather and cute city charm, I would love it here.  My family is spread out all over the country so I had no real ties to Illinois and Matt was interested in an adventure.  After I graduated, I started looking for jobs in Colorado and landed a marketing position at Wild Basin Lodge.  I moved out that May and Matt would move out after he graduated in June.  He drove out with my father and all of our stuff.  We are still very glad we took this move and it has made our relationship even better.  Neither one of us has family close by so we have each other to rely on.  We have made a lot of great friends already and are finding out more and more of our friends from college are moving out here!
Boy pops the question:
My parents came into town to watch our dog Kato while we went on our first ‘official’ vacation.  SInce we moved to Colorado, we had been planning on going to the Peach Festival in Palisade, CO.  Working with so many couples for weddings, they constantly raved about Palisade and Grand Junction, so we knew we needed to take a trip out there.  We planned this vacation about 7 months in advance.  I am such an avid vacation planner, that I made sure we stopped at some pretty spectacular places along the way.  I wanted to stop in Glenwood Springs and go to Glenwood Caverns.  When I mentioned this vacation to some coworkers, they said we HAD to stop at Hanging Lake and do the hike there.  Since we left so early in the morning, we decided to stop and do the hike before the amusement park.  It was a bit difficult to get there because the exit was closed, so we had to go back the way we came in order to get to the exit.   Parking was a nightmare but we eventually found a place.  Once we got to the top we decided to go way up top under the waterfalls.  I was done with my photos but Matt insisted we stayed for a little.  He then asked a man to take our photo under the waterfall after others were done taking photos.  As the man was taking a photo, Matt proposed!  I actually made him bring the ring back down the hike because I was afraid to loose it or scratch it.  I never hiked so quickly in my life!  It was a fantastic weekend and a nice little getaway.  It was like an engagementmoon, since he asked at the beginning we just spent the whole time celebrating.  It worked out that my parents were in town too!
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Since Dianna has worked as a wedding planner – I asked her how planning was going and what it was like being on the opposite side…

I have been enjoying the wedding planning so far.  We are actually very far ahead of the game!  I guess that is what happens when we both worked weddings before.  Every vendor I communicate with mentions how organized and ahead we are in the planning process.  I would so much rather get everything settled sooner than later.  Gives me less to think about the closer we get to the wedding.  Matt always knew I was a big planner, and takes great pride that I take a lot of control over the initial correspondences with our vendors.
It’s very interesting being on the opposite side.  We both worked in the wedding industry, me more so than Matt, but we both had a descent amount of time working weddings.  There are a lot of things we did not think we would do for our wedding after working with so many and it’s so funny to see that we completely changed our minds.  When we worked together, we would pick out things we liked and didn’t like from weddings we helped with and what we would do differently.  I think it’s really hard to make those decisions until you actually plan your own wedding.  It’s easy to say you don’t want something and when planning moves along you realize that you actually really do want that.  One thing that was disappointing was the fact that we couldn’t use all the vendors in the Estes Park area we were hoping too.  That’s what happens when you move south of Denver, though we are very excited for the ones we were able to book!!!

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