Engagement Photoshoot in the River Arts District, North Carolina

An engagement was the natural next step, but it couldn’t come together without Granny’s ring, recreated into two engagement rings – one sentimental piece each.

Tell us about falling in love.

We always joke about how wild it is that we met, Mattie’s Tinder distance was on such a small radius! Sarah had just moved to the same downtown neighborhood and thankfully the distance was just close enough.

We hit it off instantly.

Tell us about how Mattie planned your proposal.

The proposal wasn’t spur of the moment, we’d been talking about it for years, BUT it was a competition as to who was going to be the one to propose.

Mattie started scheming – sorry – designing the ring during Thanksgiving break in 2022 and spent five months planning the proposal. A trip to the Galapagos Islands was the perfect spot to make that happen.

Mattie hid the ring in a game of Trivial Pursuit, a board game she knew Sarah wouldn’t touch.

However, Mattie realized that your belongings are subject to some strict searches before entry to the islands and in a panicked decision decided to propose three days before we left for the Galapagos at a family dinner.

Mattie had a long and beautiful speech prepared (so she says) but none of it came out. She was thrown off her game and instead just asked Sarah, ‘Do you want to change our Galapagos trip to an engagement trip?’ and pulled out the ring.

Spoiler alert, Sarah said yes. Completely caught off guard and totally unsuspecting that it was coming.

Tell us about redesigning a family heirloom diamond ring to create a modern engagement ring.

Granny’s ring had five diamonds on it, and we knew we’d be able to create two engagement rings using them.

Mattie chose two different gemstones as the center piece for each so they were each unique but symobolized our connectedness. Sarah’s has a sapphire in the middle with a diamond from Granny’s ring on either side. Mattie’s an emerald with diamonds flanking the emerald.

Under neon lights, two people with long hair stand close together, foreheads touching, in a moment of affectionate closeness.

A black and white image of two people sitting opposite each other at a long table, smiling and engaged in conversation over glasses of beer.

What does being engaged mean to you?

Some people describe their engagement as starting a new book together, while for us, it just feels like turning a page.

We already have a life established together and roots planted, so getting engaged and married seems completely natural and exactly what we should be doing.

The best part of being engaged is the wedding planning process and talking about bringing our closest people together.

Tell us about having engagement photos taken with Yaseli Ovivera

Our engagement photos were taken in Asheville, NC by our photographer Yaseli. They are in the River Arts district, where Mattie and Sarah first visited when Mattie brought Sarah to Asheville for the first time back in September of 2017.

We took a picture in front of the graffiti towers and thought it would be the perfect, colorful, funky backdrop to our engagement photos. The photos felt like “us” – we are both goofy and feel silly doing serious poses, and Yaseli captured us and our love perfectly and in such a lighthearted way!