Missy and Shaun

Rounding out our day of engagements with this splendid, sunny number from Photography By Nadean. The sunshine and light in this shoot had me convinced it was Californian but nope, it’s an English engagement shoot! I love engagement shoots, most of all because I find them grounding – a shoot like Missy and Shaun’s focuses entirely on their love, the love that existed before the wedding hoo ha, the many facets that come into i t- this is that joy, that raw first step towards a new stage of life.

Missy explains, “We wanted to capture how special our relationship felt at that moment. Being engaged is a really interesting time, you have made someone a massive promise, pledged to spend your life with them, it just makes your relationship feel so bonded and positive about what the future holds.

We wanted to have the photos taken in England because this is where we fell in love, and eventually we will move home and it will be nice to have those memories of where our story began. We were so lucky Nadean travels internationally and could capture our engagement in England and will also photograph our wedding back in Sydney too.”

The couple met in Sydney. Missy recalls, “Growing up 15 minutes from each other in Sydney- it was relocating to London and bumping into each other on the other side of the world that started it all. I deliberately  ‘lost’ a bet at the pub when we met so he would take me out to breakfast the following day, and that breakfast date lasted until that evening, we had the most amazing London summer day  just handing out, I knew then that it was something out of the ordinary.”

The proposal? Equally as beautiful. “Shaun surprised me with a romantic road trip to a very special old English manor house in the Cotswolds,. After dinner we ordered tea to our room and under a giant silver cloche was a bottle of champagne and a beautifully wrapped present. It was a  hard cover book he had made of all of our  travel photos and the dreams that we had talked about during our 3 years together of what we wanted do in life and on the last page it said  ‘ so if you really want these things too, then you simply have no choice but to…  marry me? ‘ with tears rolling down my face I turned to answer him and he was down on one knee.”