Venice Beach Engagement : Kaitlin + Sergio

Well, I don’t normally do this, but Sergio just wrote their story to perfection, so I’m not even going to try and put it in my own words! I had the most amazing time hanging out with these two last Monday evening!
“Kaitlin and I first met while both working at Westside Neighborhood School. She was in the middle of her first year teaching 6th grade math and science, while I had joined the school mid-year to work as a teaching assistant in the middle school, after leaving my career as a CPA in public accounting. As it turned out, the school had assigned me to assist in Kaitlin’s math class for the remainder of the year, so we first had a strictly professional relationship as colleagues. At the time of our initial meeting, Kaitlin was in a long-distance relationship, which I remember her making very clear in one of our first interactions. Ultimately, things ended with her ex, so when the following school year was beginning, I had my opportunity to strike! In reality, I think we had both developed tremendous respect and admiration for each other’s passion for teaching and working with our students. In the fall of 2011, we began down the adventurous road of a work romance and have not looked back since. We consider October 28th to be our official anniversary date, so this October will mark 5 amazing years together. I think the strength of our relationship can be seen in our mutual passions and love for adventure. Whether skydiving for our 3-year anniversary, attending Coachella together every year since we started dating, or planning our next trip abroad, we love to support each other in enjoying new and treasured experiences. With us both being obsessive planners, the engagement process was quite memorable.  Kaitlin did an excellent job on compiling all sorts of visual aids and cheat sheets that I could reference in designing the perfect engagement ring (although I had done my own fair share of research unbeknownst to her). In a ploy to throw her off the scent of the pending proposal, I made the most of every opportunity to paint a picture of an eventual engagement that would happen months after the day I planned to actually make it happen, even going as far as to schedule a date to go and see a jeweler together after we would return from our winter break vacation to Costa Rica. Little did she know, but it would be on that trip to Costa Rica this last December that I would ask her to marry me. The day and place were all set. We would arrive in Costa Rica on December 28th, immediately rent a car and drive to the Tenorio National Park. We would hike for about 45 minutes down to the most amazingly beautiful waterfall at Rio Celeste. Of course, the moment we parked the car, a wave of torrential downpour hit the park, but we stayed the course and pushed through. When we finally reached the lookout spot for the waterfall, the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and I pleaded with Kaitlin to break the park rules and hop the railing so we could get an even closer vantage point of the waterfall. Being the good girl that she is, Kaitlin refused to hop the rail and I was forced to call an audible (Donovan McNabb audible, not a Sam Bradford audible). After snapping a quick selfie and Kaitlin saying “Wow, that came out so cute!”, I got down on one knee and said, “Well, not as cute as this…” and proceeded to ask her to spend the rest of her life with me. Funny side story here is that the GoPro I had purchased for the trip, specifically to record the proposal, somehow mistakenly was turned off in the process of getting down on a knee, so I never actually recorded it. Nonetheless, I totally nailed it, she said yes, and we kicked of the trip of our lives in Costa Rica. Here’s where you get to see the beauty of our relationship. Since we both know each other to be obsessive planners that always do our best to plan for worst case scenarios, Kaitlin never expected I would have the balls to bring an engagement ring to Costa Rica, which in her defense, was a perfectly good assumption. I did not bring her engagement ring to Costa Rica for fear of it being lost in transit or on the trip during our outdoor adventures. I searched the internet far and wide to find a replica stand-in ring that was nearly identical to the actual ring, so that we both could enjoy the trip care-free. She got to first see her real engagement ring once we returned to Los Angeles and got to celebrate with our families. Since then, we’ve been enjoying the life of an engaged couple and can’t be happier to be planning our special day next July, which brings us to you, our distinguished photographer, Lucas!”

I can’t wait for their wedding, If you can’t tell from reading this, these are my kind of people!