Trillium Lake Engagement Session | Claire + Jeff

We started our Trillium Lake adventure by cracking open some beers in the middle of the forest, enjoying the beauty of the tall trees above us, and laughing our butts off about how hard it was to climb around in this forest. While capturing some cute snuggle photos of Jeff and Claire as they were sipping on some beers, we thought hey we should try doing one of those fun “champagne popping” shots by shaking the beers, and so we did. The result was literal perfection. Claire got so into it, that she forgot about her facial expression and made the greatest face ever, we all looked through those shots on the back of the camera and couldn’t stop laughing at how intense her face was. Then we frolicked through some flowers and ran around in a huge meadow, while secretly praying no one would twist an ankle in the process.
We ended the shoot with a bang on the actual lake, Jeff and Claire rode out in a beautiful canoe, and Maks and I in a inflatable canoe, Maks was the driving, while I tried to take photos and not fall into the water. Definitely was a lot harder then it looked, right when we got out into the middle of the lake the wind started going crazy, and would rock the canoe, and every time we could try to come closer to each other the wind would give us so much speed that we kept zooming by each other and spend forever turning around and trying again. Definitely gave us a good laugh. I had the bright idea of having Claire and Jeff stand in the middle of their canoe for what I envisioned to be quite the epic shot, but the second they would try to stand up the wind would pick up and rock their canoe, almost tipping them over. haha but my goodness was it fun, and my goodness did it make us laugh.

Jeff and Claire radiate so much joy and excitement, and we cant wait for their wedding this July! They are holding their ceremony in their neighbor's backyard and are closing down the the street in front of the house to hold their reception, doesn’t that sound absolutely awesome!?!

Words from Claire & Jeff

We met in the summer after freshman year of high school and instantly became best friends. We started dating May 1, 2009 and 10 years later are finally tying the knot. Our combined love of travel and adventure has been a cornerstone of our relationship, culminating in our move across the country to Florida. 

Throughout our relationship Claire has managed to surprise Jeff by flying across the country or doing other smaller things throughout our relationship with Jeff's attempts at a return surprise always thwarted by Claire’s gift of figuring out surprises; that was until Christmas 2017...

During a quick trip back home to Oregon for Christmas of 2017, Jeff managed to "avoid" asking Claire through Christmas day knowing that there was a cross-country ski trip planned a couple days later. As it was more or less "expected" for the proposal to happen on Christmas itself (both of our favorite holiday), as was expected, this frustrated Claire. On the day of the proposal both Ruth and Megan (Claire's mom and Maid of Honor respectively) came on the trip. Around half way around Trillium Lake, Megan sped ahead just before Jeff proposed. Jeff handed Claire a package wrapped in nutcracker paper, a late Christmas present? Inside was a picture book with all of “the reasons why.” When Claire flipped to the last page, Jeff got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me?” Claire, of course, said yes immediately while Ruth excitedly cheered. Fortunately the ring was not lost in the snow on the way to Claire's finger.