I'm the owner + photographer at Anne Casey Photography — serving Maryland & Pennsylvania

I’m so grateful for the support of this fun series! I’m in a really exciting season of life right now- I’m engaged! Chris and I are in the midst of wedding planning so I thought I would share our history together and our proposal story!

Our Story:

Chris and I met nearly ten years ago when I started a new job as a hostess in an upscale restaurant. Chris was the evening bartender. Our schedules overlapped by about an hour each afternoon and I always looked forward to seeing him at the end of my day. Every Friday Chris worked the lunch shift behind the bar and he and I would take our lunch breaks together. (Perks of that job? I got to order anything I wanted off of the menu for lunch!) Later on he started to pick up shifts on hosting with me. Early on those mornings, Chris would send me a message asking what color I was wearing so that he could match his shirt and tie to my outfit. It was the sweetest! Chris has this look about him that would make you think he’s some sort of a badass. He’d roll into work with his leather jacket, Doc Martens, earrings, and tattoos. Of course, all that had to go when it was time to change into his tuxedo for the dinner shift. Except the Doc Martens, somehow he managed to convince the managers that they went with the tux… After a few short years, we both had moved on from the restaurant to other jobs. We barely kept in touch but every once in a while he would pop in to my head and I would wonder how he was doing.

A few years ago, I moved back to the town I grew up in. Chris had always been in the back of my mind and I had no idea what he was up to. I figured there was no better time to check in and see where he was in life! Just my luck, he was still living nearby and single! As it turns out, I had been on his mind, too, ever since we met in 2005. We picked up right where we left off several years earlier. And the rest is history!

We got engaged in the evening on September 19 after modeling that afternoon for a fellow photographer. She was doing a shoot with a local bridal gown shop and had asked Chris and I to play bride and groom for the day! Obviously, I’m a photographer, so I was modeling and photographing that day! It was so much fun and I kept mumbling to the girls that it sure would be the perfect time to propose! I didn’t think it was actually going to happen; I didn’t think Chris would be the type to propose in front of a crowd. Once we wrapped up the shoot and had changed back in to our regular clothes, Chris and I were standing over by the wedding cake looking through my camera at the images. I’ll never forget that he said, “This was fun, we should do it again sometime.” I jokingly brushed it off because it wasn’t the sort of comment I figured he would make before popping the question and we had talked nonchalantly about getting married on more than on occasion. Boy, was I wrong! All of the sudden he reached into his pocked and pulled out the unmistakable Smyth box and got on one knee! I started shaking and said yes immediately! Chris didn’t mention to Lisa, the photographer, that he was going to propose but we were so lucky that she was still able to capture it for us!! The second we got in the car we started calling family and friends to let them know the exciting news, ten years in the making. We are planning an elegant December 2016 wedding in Baltimore, MD.

Side note- how lucky was I that my hair and makeup had been professionally done?!

The Ring:

I had inherited my great grandmother’s wedding rings. They hadn’t been cleaned in probably 50 years and I was just holding on to them as a family heirloom. Chris took the wedding set to Smyth Jewelers and had the diamond set into the most perfect setting! The jewelers told Chris that the diamond was almost 100 years old and was cut in a style that is no longer done. I definitely have a one-of-a-kind ring and I get so many compliments on it! I love antiques, so it was really exciting that my great-grandmother’s diamond was able to be a part of my engagement ring!

Stay tuned for more Behind the Lens posts! Anything you’d like to know about me? Leave a comment below and maybe I can answer it in a future post!