Van contacted me about a month before this shoot. She and her fiance Hai live in Southern California and found me on a Google search. They were going to be in New York for the new year celebration and wanted to do their engagement shoot here. They wanted to do a longer shoot than most of my clients. Altogether we spent about 3 hours shooting around the city.  I knew they wanted to do do a Christmas-y / New Year themed shoot so I decided to go out before New Year’s Eve and get a couple of fun and totally NY props, like the 2011 glasses and the ‘I <3 NY’ stickers. Being that this was their first trip to the Big Apple, they had never been to Central Park and had only seen Times Square in the chaos of NYE. It was so much fun, my lovely assistant Karinna and I got to be their tour guides and their photographers all-in-one! To wrap up the shoot we did a wardrobe change and headed to the West Village, another spot they had never seen. They loved every minute of it and even had some fun ideas of their own, like jumping in front of all the stopped cars on 8th Ave when the light turned red. Van and Hai will be married this year in Vietnam.

Just for fun here is the story of how Van and Hai met, I think it’s pretty cute!

We have known each other since 1998, that was when I was 13 years old, Hai was 14 years old, and we went to middle school together in Vietnam. We were only casual friends at the time with some small talks and little helps between us, nothing was serious. We also studied in the same high school. Right after that, Hai went to Oklahoma to attend college in 2002, while I would not immigrate to Texas until May 2005. We rarely talked to each other during all those years. Well, fate had a miracle way to intertwine us together into the net of love. At almost the same time, in November 2005, my family moved from Texas to California, and Hai transferred to another college in California. We ended up meeting again on a warm afternoon on the beautiful sand of Huntington Beach. Even more magical, in Vietnamese, Van (my name) means “cloud” and Hai means “sea”. So here we were, two friends seeing each other again in Huntington Beach where the sea and the clouds together drew an unforgettable scene—a place we were destined to meet after so many years. And we have been struck with love since then …