Engagement Photo Session

I have been remiss in my writing, yet again. Of all the stories I have chosen to share with you, I have yet to inform you of our engagement photo session disaster. We decided that an outdoor shoot would look nicer, more natural, if you will. I wanted to get it out of the way before school started, which meant that we needed to do it in August, in Houston. We were crazy, I know, but I worked with the studio to schedule the session as early in the morning as they would let me.

We were to meet our photographer at 10:00 am down at the Japanese Gardens in Hermann Park. Our lovely dog was also scheduled to be in the pictures, so we planned to get to the gardens a few minutes early to allow for dog-handling issues. We also weren’t sure how long it would take us to get into the city, so allowed for some extra time there, as well, which meant that we arrived at the park at 9:30.

The gardens were lovely and, in true Hermann Park tradition, we ran into a couple of homeless people “showering” in the public restroom sink. To kill time (and tire the dog out), we walked around the gardens trying to stay in the shade to keep cool. Around 9:50, my cell phone rang; it was the photographer:

“I’m running a little behind. I was taking my grandmother to church and I got a flat tire. I should be there soon, but I just wanted to let you know I was running late.”

Seriously, that’s what she said. Even if that was the truth (who knows?), wouldn’t you lie and make up a more believable reason? Not that I'm a proponent of lying, but who would believe you? My mistake was not to ask her how long she thought she would be. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and was starting to get hot. At this point, I went back to the car and retrieved a couple of kitchen towels that we had tossed in there in case the dog got muddy.

Finally, at 10:20, we saw a woman approach the park with a bag of camera gear. Tadaaaa! She had made it. She apologized profusely then claimed she would shoot quickly, so we wouldn’t be out in the heat too long. We hurried around the path in the park, stopping in several places to take shots, and finished in only an hour. Eww, it was so hot. Luckily I had brought the towels from the car, not for the dog, but because we used them to mop the sweat from our brows.

In short, it was a total fiasco. It did make it easier to choose which photos we wanted to send out to family, as there were few in which the dog behaved that we didn’t look like we had been plopped in the middle of the desert.