Sam Proposes to Kristin at the Kubota Garden in Seattle

I have to preface this by admitting that it has taken me far too long to get a blog post done for this photo session.  In my defense, I’ve been jammed with other projects and my blog has been suffering because of that.  Still, I feel badly that I have been so slow, and am glad this post is finally being written.

Sam contacted me in late July to ask if I was available to take photos of his planned proposal to girlfriend Kristin.  They live in Wisconsin, and were planning a trip to visit Seattle in mid-August and Sam wanted to propose while here.  Of course, since they don’t live in the area Sam really had no idea just where a good location would be for him to carry out his plan.  We talked a bit about some different possibilities, and finally settled on Kubota Garden after Sam looked at some examples of other weddings that I had photographed there, located on my Blog page.  Kubota Garden has been one of my favorite Seattle locations for proposals, engagement sessions, family photos, etc. since I first discovered it more than 30 years ago, and I knew that we should be able to get a lot of fun photos there.

Because Sam and Kristin had never been to Kubota, I sent Sam a map of the Garden, with the location where he should do the proposal marked alnog with the path that wouold get them there.  This sounds pretty straightforward, but because of the way the Garden is laid out following map directions is not exactly easy, so I also told Sam to text me when they arrived at the park so I could help him if needed.  Of course, this all had to be done in such a manner that Kristin wouldn’t get suspicious and figure out what Sam was planning!

As it worked out. Sam proved to be quite good at figurng out the map and he and Kristin arrived at the chosen location almost right on schedule.  I had suggested that Sam use the Moon Bridge as the location for the proposal, which should give them a bit of privacy as well as being a beautiful spot for photos.  Sam had sent me a photo of himself and Kristin so I was able to recognize them when they reached the bridge.  I was pretending to be a random photographer taking photos in the park, and was mostly out of sight from their location on the Moon Bridge.

All went pretty much exactly as planned!  Krisin was quite surprised; she and Sam had talked a bit about possibly getting married, but the timing of the proposal caught her completely off-guard.  Once Sam had given her the ring, I came out of hiding and introduced myself.  We then had a very pleasant time exploring the Garden while I took photos of the newly engaged couple.

Lots of photos below, I hope that you enjoy them!