When I pulled into the driveway of the location my gps had led me to for Kate and Owen’s engagement session, I was first greeted by a flock of chickens. They roamed near my car while I pulled the camera gear from my backseat; as I put the first lens on one of my camera bodies, a young blonde in a sundress came out the side door of the farm house on the property to greet me. She invited me inside the recently renovated home soon after, where I met her fiancé, Owen, for the first time as well. They immediately struck me as the quintessential small town, high-school-sweetheart couple – Kate’s smile radiates and the first thing you notice on Owen is his dimple, which would feel almost too perfectly saccharine if it weren’t for how genuinely sweet these two actually are.
One of my favorite aspects of getting to know my couples is when I get the chance to really see who they are beyond their social media profiles and dimples and perfect teeth – when Kate told me about how excited she was to be taking on her first year of teaching this fall, and how often they help out around the family farm, and that her family worked together to renovate the home the two of them now share, and when they exchanged laughs and giant grins as they reminisced about their early days of dating one another as teenagers. Their voices were drenched in adoration for not only each other as they shared these stories with me, but also for their family and friends and hometown and passions. I have a soft spot for good-hearted, small town people, because these are the same kind of humans and places I grew up loving, too. These two are getting married next June and having their reception on this same family farm, and I already can’t wait to be surrounded by the people and sounds and smells they both know and love so hard and well.