Urban Downtown Syracuse Engagement Session

Ashley and Haley featured some of the neatest urban spots during their Syracuse engagement session with Mindy Hulett Photo. The vibrant blue and copper tones coming from the rooftops and the alleyways jump off the photos. While the city colors are beautiful to see, it doesn’t even compare to the exuberating love that is coming from these NY natives’ faces!

How did you meet?

We met in October of 2015 through my best friend who is Haley’s cousin. We met and were inseparable off the bat.

What is your proposal story?

Our proposal was a huge surprise to Haley. I bought the ring around Christmas time in 2017, but I kept it at my sister’s so that I wouldn’t do it until I had the perfect plan. Haley doesn’t like to be center of attention so it had to be intimate, but at the same time, I wanted to make it memorable – a kind of big deal and also capture it on camera. I got her dad’s permission a week or two prior to proposing, of course, so after that – it was go time. We do photo shoots often for holiday cards and also just to have photos of us with our dogs (they’re our children lol). We were getting spring photos done as we usually do and I had told the photographer that I was planning to propose.

We had our session scheduled at Franklin Square in Syracuse. We kept taking several photos until we got to the perfect spot to pop the question. There were a few times I could’ve sworn I blew it because the ring was big in my jean pockets and when I set it down with “props” we had for the photos it had rolled out one time, but she swears she never saw it. We only had our Yorkie at the time so I just had made a little plaque to put on her collar that said “Will you marry mommy”. We were taking an awkwardly posed photo, but it was perfect to capture the exact photos and poses I wanted without staging anything. She was standing in front of me and I was behind her on one knee so that when she turned around to get ready to pose with me for the next photo, there I was, on one knee with the ring and our fur baby.

Tell us about the ring/band.

Our rings are the same style, but mine is 14k rose gold and hers is 14k white gold. They are halo style princess cut Leo Diamond rings with matching wedding bands and are 1 ct sets. I chose these sets because of how pretty and “blingy” they are. They look like a rainbow when in the light and project that bright white disco looking reflection on walls when the light hits it just right. These sets caught my eye right away.

Tell us about your engagement shoot outfits and accessories.

Choosing the outfits and accessories for our engagement photos was not easy. Neither of us are very “girly” so finding two cute outfits to match was a struggle! It seemed like once we found a good outfit, then we couldn’t find a pair of shoes to match us both so it took us some time before we finally found “the one”. We didn’t want to get too dolled up because that’s not like us so we went with cropped jeans and a blouse with open-toed sandals to match, despite the fact everyone wanted us to wear dresses. For jewelry, we just wore simple necklaces just so that our chests didn’t look completely bare and wore one of our MK watches.

Have you started planning your wedding? What is your wedding date?

Our wedding is pretty much all set and planned for September 26th of this year, but because of this COVID situation we are looking at possibly having to postpone. I never in a million years would have thought that my wedding would be ruined by a pandemic! It is extremely saddening to think about postponing because we were so so over the moon excited for our big day to finally be here after being engaged for 2.5 years.

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