I have been looking forward to this Lake Norman engagement session for a long time. I not going to lie, I didn’t know when this day would finally come. John & Courtney have been together for a while. I honestly cant remember life with Courtney before John. But I am so proud of these two & where they are in life together & could not be happier for them. It was such an honor photographing you.

There is a lot of history with these two families. With their families knowing each other before they were born, it took Courtney’s brother  Curtis introducing them to get them together. Initially Courtney ruled it out, because John was Curtis friend & she wouldn’t be interested. Little did she know while home from college, Curtis convinced her to ride up to the Fire Department where he worked. While chatting with the boys at the station, a car pulls up & out hops John. Who proceeded to cut into the conversations & later introduces himself to Courtney. Followed by Courtney joking that he looked like Kevin (John’s twin brother). The alarm then went off at the station and all the firemen left, leaving just the two of them in the parking lot together.Forcing them to hang out & the rest is history. They have been together ever since, & after dates at Coyote Joe’s, traveling to & from High Point to see each other, sushi dates, & years of dating John decided he couldn’t see life without Courtney.

I love this from Courtney’s perspective “This ones romantic. We were at the Hunt Club with my family & we were having a clean up day cutting trees and burning things down. Mom had mentioned we might go to Southern Pines that night to go to a brewery and that Mark (John’s dad) would be coming down that day. Dad kept saying he needed Mark to help cut a really big tree down. Around 2:30 my Dad, Curtis (Her Brother) and John cut the tree anyway, without Mark, and I kept asking John like where is your dad? Is he okay? have you heard from him? He kept blowing me off and said yeah it’s not like “them” to be late. I didn’t know the whole family was coming. Eventually the whole crew roles up (John’s Family) and they get out and start helping cut trees. They were all expecting him to have already done it, but I know now he didn’t really have a plan until about five minutes before he did it!! All the guys disappeared and we had lit this giant bonfire and Jordan (Curtis girlfriend) and I were just dancing around having fun. My mom says let’s take a group picture. So i’m just down in the front with I basically force Jordan to get down with me because who wants to be the only person on the front row (oops). He was right behind me and the picture was taking forever but I didn’t have a clue why! Mom says okay now turn around I just recall almost fighting her on it and thinking why in the world does she want a pic of our butts? But when I turned he was down on his knee asking me to marry him! I promptly blacked out from excitement and ugly cried. He took like five minutes to give me the ring and asked for a miller lite. It was perfect. all our family gathered together, which was the only thing I wanted for that moment, and he managed to surprise me!”

It was so much fun photographing John & Courtney & their beautiful Lake Norman engagement! If you love this & want to see our most recent wedding you can check out Grant & Katie’s unforgettable day at Vesuvius Vineyards here!

xo alli campbell