Surprise Wedding Proposal at Snoqualmie Falls

A couple weeks ago I got a phone call from Ben.  He was planning to do a surprise proposal to his girlfriend Samantha at Snoqualmie Falls, and wanted to know if I was available to take some photos of the proposal.  Ben wanted to do the proposal on March 14.  At this point that was about two weeks away, and when I looked at the long-term forecast it did not look good, with a big cold front moving in a day before the 14th with several inches of snow a decent possibility.  But this was the day that Ben had free, so we decided to watch the weather and hope for the best.

As the day got closer, the forecast got worse.  Two days before our planned session the forecast was for temps in the 30s with gusty winds with possible rain or snow.  Not exactly great conditions for a photo session!  But Ben was still determined to do the proposal regardless of conditions, so we discussed exactly when and where we would meet at the Falls and planned to see each other on Saturday.

As it turned out, the weather gods had a change of heart.  It was quite cold on Friday night and there was snow down to about 500ft, but the weather was quite nice with partly cloudy skies and calm conditions.  The down side of this was that even though it seemed that everyone was freaking out about the Coronavirus, there were a lot of people who either did not take it seriously or who just wanted to get out and see the Falls, so it was quite crowded.  Not as bad as a nice day during the summer but still a couple hundred people.

Ben and I had planned to meet in the restroom, and I filled him in on what I had seen in my quick reconnaissance of the park.  We decided that Ben would do the proposal in an area without a lot of other people, even though this meant that we would not be able to have the falls in the background for these photos.  I moved into position and waited for Ben and Samantha to arrive.

They showed up fairly quickly and I did my best to look like some random guy taking photos of the falls, while trying to keep an eye on Ben so I could see when he was ready to propose.  When Ben dropped to his knee in front of Samantha she stopped paying any attention to her surroundings and I was able to get into position to get some shots of the proposal and immediate aftermath.  As I started taking photos a light breeze came up that blew spray from the falls up and over where we were standing, and you’ll see this mist in the first group of photos.

Even though Ben had told me that Samantha knew that he was going to propose sometime soon, you never would have know this from her reaction, which you’ll see a bit of in the following photos.  She was very excited and for the next few minutes I was not able to take many pictures of anything but lots of hugging and kissing! 😀

Once Samantha had calmed down I introduced myself, and we talked a bit about what we could do for more photos.  Unfortunately the trail that led into the base of the falls was currently closed, so that was not a possibility.  But there is another location just a few miles away that I love to use for photos, and when I described it to Samantha and Ben they thought it would be a good spot for some more shots.

We then spent some time walking the park at the falls, finding a few places where we could get some good photos without any photo-bombers.  Then it was off to location #2, located along the Snoqualmie River where an old and no longer used railroad trestle crosses the river.

We had a lot of fun walking along the river and playing on the railroad tracks while taking photos.  Here are some of the photos from our session, I hope that you enjoy them.