Tomorrow Beth and I are heading to Sarnia to photograph Darryl & Laura's wedding! I am really sentimental and always love hearing engagement stories - and Darryl emailed me his story and wow! What a keeper!! Check this out..

In February, Laura and I celebrated 5 years of being together. We started dating on February 5th, 2002. So for our 5th "anniversary" (Feb. 5, 2007) i made her a little scrap book. on the front of the scrap book it said RINGS. when she opened it up on the first page there was a picture of a tree, and on the second page there was a description about how if you were to cut a tree open you would find a sequence of rings and the rings of a tree are like its memories. it tells you how big the tree was at different parts of the trees life. so the next few pages were ticket stubs of concerts we went to, pictures, tickets to Les Miserables, and a bunch of other things. and those were like our rings, our memories. and the last page said "to be continued..."

so fastforward to July 5th 207 (5th being our monthly anniversary) we went out for dinner and then went down by the bridge to get ice cream and watch the sun go down. and then i brought her out to this park and at the park is a huge old tree right on top of the beach. so i had my dad and my brothers rig up some lights and set up the stools and guitar and table with wine on it, and the painting. so when we were about 20 ft. from the tree, my brother plugged it in and the lights lit up. so i sat her on the stool and poured her a glass of wine. and i played two songs for her on the guitar and they were both songs that i wrote her when we were dating. one was the very first song i ever wrote her...now the songs were like rings because they are memories of when i wrote her the songs and when i played them for her. and then i brought her over to the painting. now the painting is a picture of a tree and above it and below it are lines that i wrote on it from the emails that we sent back and forth. the first line is a line from the very first email laura ever wrote me. and the rest are scattered lines throughout the history of emails. so the lines from the emails are also like rings because they are memories of our relationship...and so i said to her as i was getting down on my knee that "i thought it would be fitting since we were under a tree to give you another ring"...so yeah that was the whole thing... it turned out great and my family helped me set it up...so then her family was there and my family was there...i couldn't have asked for it to work out any better...

And now tomorrow they're getting married at the very same tree! How cool is that? Can't wait!

Here are a couple photos Darryl emailed me also of the tree, and the painting!