Thousand Oaks, CA you’ve got my heart completely!! This place is so beautiful and everyone IS SO KIND!!! Jessica and Eric, you made this Thousand Oaks Engagement Session and day so incredible for me and I can’t thank you enough for inviting me into your lives!!
I started my drive about 2hrs before our session, and got to the Starbucks near Satwiwa National Park to meet my beautiful couple around 15-30min before our session time. I don’t think I’ve ever clicked so well with a couple before! We sat and talked and their love story made me so excited just being in the same room as them. They have a fairytale story. They met in college, fell in love, studied and hung out together. It’s what you dream would happen!! He’s a science (I forgot, I think BioChemistry, but I could be wrong) major, she was an interior design major. They’re my people. THE POINT IS they’re so dang beautiful and sweet and kind. And they have a love you want to be around.
When Eric proposed, Jessica knew it was going to happen, so he did a bunch of mock proposals and did her favorite things throughout the day! SO FREAKING CUTE. Her ring isn’t diamond, it’s her birth stone!!! How intimate!! Aaaaaand she got him an engagement ring too!! Half of it is meteorite (WHAT THE HECK) and the bottom half is deer horn (no deers were harmed in the making, Jessica assured me). I want to be taken back to another Thousand Oaks Engagement session, I love that town.
Satwiwa National Park
In the summer, Satwiwa National Park is filled with gold. The grass, the light, the mood. It’s all Golden. And the atmosphere and everyone we passed, everyone was just so dang kind. My beautiful couple were so in love I hardly had to intervene during our session. They made my job so dang easy! After our talk at Starbucks, I simply gave them the space to be their madly-in-love selves in fields of yellow grass and miles of silence. They were comfortable around me and I was with them. We fit the way I hoped we would. The sunset was stunning, the weather was perfect, their love was beautiful. I can’t express how much fun this session was because they allowed me to do my thing while they did theirs.
By the end of our shoot, they told me they had a blast and that they couldn’t imagine going with anyone else for their elopement next year. There’s no better feeling than knowing your couple loved you as much as you loved them. I can’t wait for their wedding day! I can’t wait to see them again! And I can’t freakin wait to hang out and photograph their transition to becoming one. It makes my heart full just thinking about it.
Enjoy the love and the light in these photos. They make me smile so big.
If you’re interested in browsing through more of my engagement sessions like this one, click on my journal tab, or click here!!
Do you want to head to this location and have that same pretty golden light in the golden grass and all? WELL it was in late September about an hour and a half before sunset, and we stayed for sunset. That’s how you get that magic light you see in this engagement session! Anyway, let’s go!