I love these two people, and definitely loved our time in Montauk, NY for their engagement photos.

Last year was honestly so good. We got to work with amazing people, see familiar faces at weddings and family sessions, got soaked in the rain, sometimes had perfect weather, had our Cape May lobster rolls… But there were two sessions that meant the world to me as a photographer and human. For the first one, that will share soon, we flew 7 hours to another continent (+ one more flight and a bus ride), for this one, and we drove 6 hours, and we would happily do it all over again.

This story starts the first time we went to Long Island. I met Marcella in Greenport, NY, when she was the hair stylist at Amanda and Matt’s Brecknock Hall wedding. We typically don’t spend much time with hair and makeup teams, sometimes they are gone before we arrive, but in this case Marcella stayed for touch ups, so we got to spend a lot of time with her. She not only did an amazing job with Amanda’s hair (go to the link!), but she was the nicest human to work with. So I was happy to share photos with her when I finished the gallery for that wedding. She responded with a very sweet message, and said she’d be in touch when it was time to plan her wedding. I thought that was sweet of her, and that maybe she even meant it when she wrote it, but I did not expect her to really reach out for her own wedding.

We stayed in touch on Instagram, and fast forward to about a year later (after seeing her work on many many weddings), her and Vinny got engaged, and she reached out! We had a FaceTime call where we got to meet Vinny and talk about their plans. They are both awesome and I could not have been more excited to meet them in Mountauk, NY for their engagement photos. I’m so happy we were able to make this happen. I always tell people meaningful places are the best locations for photos, but it’s definitely better when meaningful places also happen to be this beautiful.

It was a long session, so I’ll tell you all about it in three parts. We started at Harvest on Fort Pond, which is their favorite place to have dinner when they are in Montauk, and they were kind enough to let us take photos there while the restaurant was closed. From there we drove to an area where you can see the lighthouse in the distance (and where they do weddings because there was one happening). Look at how pretty this outfits are!

After that we headed to Montauk Point Lighthouse, which Marcella describes as her happy place. It was a lot busier than we expected, so we had to be extra careful and creative composing our photos to get photos without a bunch of people, with the right light. Scott even laid down on the boulders, and I think it was all worth it. Even the extra editing I did to give them some wide photos like this next one. I can see why Marcella loves this place, even with the people there it was so nice.

After that, we went to Mountauk’s Sunset Beach for our last stop of the session. We got there for the end of the soft light and had the beach almost all to ourselves. We had fun running, got introduced to Loverboy drinks, and I was having so much fun we kept taking photos until the last bit of light was done. According to them, they had fun too.

I cannot wait for their wedding just under six months from now.

Clients: Hair and makeup artist Marcella Styles by Marcella and Pastry Chef Vincenzo from The Mad Baker.

Marcella’s Makeup on this session: Makeup by Nicole

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Bonus photo: A toast with my favorite Loverboy flavor so far, Lemoncello.