I’ve known Chris as “Heather’s cousin” since we were younger, so when I first learned that he was dating Heather’s friend Tricia a few years ago, it made complete sense to me. When you meet someone through a mutual friend, you get the opportunity to see what they’re like outside of the dating lens – how they operate when there’s no pressure, and what kind of a friend they are – and as two of Heather’s closest people, I immediately imagined that this was a pairing that came from seeing those sides of each other and knowing this could potentially be their person.

Their initially planned engagement session was rescheduled due to rain, but since they had originally mentioned hoping for snow, I was thrilled when plenty came down prior to their day-after-Christmas reschedule date. But as the day came closer, the temps continued to drop – the expected high the next day was nine degrees when I reached out to them on Christmas Day to see where their heads were at. They decided to go for it, and officially became my “coldest session yet”. It’s a serious team effort at an engagement session like this – we hopped in and out of Chris’ truck together multiple times, warming our hands and blasting the heat between photo sets before making a brisk walk off to the next spot. I can’t stress enough how tough it is to not only have your photo taken in single digit weather, but also to smile and laugh when you can’t feel your toes. But Chris and Tricia were freaking troopers through all of this – not only did they smile and laugh, but they also cracked jokes to one another, and kept each others’ hands warm, too.