Allie & Paul

I love, love love today’s engagement photos of Allie and Paul. They capture a beautiful morning, something Allie and Paul do often and their natural responses to their surroundings and each other. Photos today are by Its Beautiful Here. Scout, our photographer today tells “Allie and Paul are the sweetest couple. We often meet our couples in cafes but Allie and Paul insisted we meet at their place for takoyaki and the best lemon lime bitters! Such great hosts and a couple so obviously in love! We all hit it off, they booked us and we are so excited to be shooting their wedding.

Allie and Paul also booked a memento shoot, they wanted to get a feel for how we work and what to expect on their wedding day. So we planned to meet at their fave cafe (Bhodi Monk), catch a tram to St Kilda, peruse the St Kilda Farmers Market and wander down to the St Kilda Botanical Gardens for some photos at their favourite playground!! It was a really great shoot, we were all very relaxed and up for some fun! I think they also have given us our most lovely compliment as well. Not only did they love their images, they loved the experience even more. We can’t ask for more than that!”

Paul tells the story of their engagement. “Allie and I have had so many lovely experiences together, so I wanted to somehow capture those when I proposed to her…plus, I thought that looking back on those experiences would make her more likely to say “Yes”!

Ever since I was young I loved Goldberg machines, which are basically complex machines for doing something simple, often in a chain reaction – I originally saw one in my favourite movie, “The Goonies”. Well, it turned out that, in Japan, “The Goonies” was Allie’s favorite movie as well!”

“So, I put my love of Goldberg machines together with my love for Allie and came up with my Proposal Machine, which I decided to make and set up in her apartment. Each step in the machine was going to tell a little bit about our experiences, such as our first date (when we went on the tram together and ended up at a church), with each part in our story triggering the next part in the machine. This would eventually open the door to the kitchen where I was waiting on one knee.

Sounds great in theory, right? Well, first I had to make the machine parts without anyone knowing what I was doing – I did it in Dad’s garage and told him I was making shelves. He’d pop down occasionally to look, not say anything, and (as I found out later) then go upstairs to tell Mum they were the weirdest shelves he’d ever seen.

“Once everything was made, I set up the machine while Allie was out for the day…except she came back before I was finished! I managed to convince her I was making a surprise dinner (which was partly true) that wasn’t ready yet – she happily obliged by taking a walk on her own in the park.

When she came back and opened the door it triggered the machine…and the tram crashed straight into the church. This didn’t happen on our date and wasn’t supposed to happen with the machine, so I had to quickly jump out and make some repairs while Allie closed her eyes. The tram was off again it worked pretty well, but Allie still had her eyes closed!

I gave up on my machine and got down on my knee, told her to open her eyes and asked her to marry me. Thankfully, she forgave my engineering challenges and said “Yes!” Then I took her through what was supposed to happen with the machine, all while we were laughing and crying at the same time.”