Siegel Thurston Photography

As many of you know we got engaged a couple months ago but its been a busy couple of months so it took me a while to get theses thoughts down.

I always wondered how Brett was going to finally do it…. from a hot air balloon.  Sneak it into a glass of champaign over a fancy dinner.  Next to a beautiful fountain in front of hundreds of people we don’t know.  Maybe just over coffee one morning.

The proposal came on one of our road trips when I was least expecting it.  He really wanted the element of surprise and he knew that any of the above would be to obvious or not exciting enough.  (I would have been ok with the over coffee idea).

Brett had planned out a couple of nights on our trip to stay at the most unconventional Air BnB places he could find.  Our second night put is in Glenwood Springs Colorado at a Teepee nestled on the bank of the Colorado river.  While I was rummaging around in the truck gathering up our gear for the evening he was apparently getting the full tour of the grounds and picking out “the spot”.  For about a month prior to our trip Brett talked non stop about how he wanted to make a bunch of time lapses on our trip.  So I thought nothing of it when he wanted to do a time lapse of us relaxing by the river drinking his bottle of birthday champaign.  I mean seriously how did I not see this coming?

We get to this cute little bench next to the river and he sets down one of the antique cameras he sometimes likes to run film through.  Brett starts setting up the time laps and I sit down on the bench.  He then casually asked me to throw a roll of film in his vintage Argus for him.

I kid you not my first thought was ” I just did my nails in the car so they will look half way decent for the trip and I’m going to totally ruin them trying to pry this camera open.”

Several minutes pass and I’m poking and pulling on the Argus in my hands.  Finally Brett tells me to push the little button on the side and pull.  ( yeah and I consider myself a photographer… give me a Hasselblad and I would have had it apart and filmed up in no time).  I do as Brett recommends with the Argus and to my frustration the back swings open and there is already film in the camera ready to use.

” Oh that’s old film take it out and toss a new roll in for me” Brett says so matter of fact.

I’m thinking ‘ok but that’s odd, you like shooting with old film’.

I pull the film out and sitting in the shutter staring up at me  is the most beautiful ring I have ever seen.  But it’s GIGANTIC!

So my first thought is ‘This ring can’t be real….Wait is this a joke? cause if that’s the case this isn’t funny…’

I look over at Brett who is still standing next to the time lapse camera, and he just stares at me.  What I didn’t know at the time was that he was over there clicking away getting my reaction.  If felt like forever passed when in reality I’m sure it was only seconds and then he slowly makes his way over to me and gets down on one knee jumbling up the speech he had so carefully prepared.  Of course I said YES!  We then drank our champaign listening to the river flow by  and he starts explaining all the work that went into designing the ring and the amazing heirloom pieces he used to put it together.  His mom’s engagement ring was combined with his grandmother’s 50th anniversary ring and to top it all off Brett chose to use a yellow sapphire (his birthstone).  What a romantic!  It turns out that Brett had been working on this ring for months with our friend Alber and amazing jewelry designer.  All the meetings they had that I thought were about upcoming photo shoots were actually ring planning meetings.

We have a bunch of ideas about when and where we want to get married but right now we are just enjoying the feeling of being engaged.

Yep that’s my vintage camera now.  It sits next to my desk and looks pretty.  I told Brett that day that he’s not getting this one back.