Once upon a time, there was a totally adorable couple named Maggie and Chris. Equally cute was their bookstore engagement session with Pittsburgh wedding photographer Dawn Derbyshire. These two love to spend afternoons wondering the aisles of Half Price Books and perusing the titles, so they hit up the Monroeville location for some very unique pre-wedding pics. They even brought some java from Donut Connection, a coffee shop that holds a special place in their hearts. Cozying up to some best sellers and checking out the used vinyls section was a great precursor to their Wes Anderson-inspired wedding. If this e-shoot is any indication of their future, I have no doubt these two will live happily ever after!
From the bride…
Tell me about yourselves! When and how did you two meet? How long have you been together? How did you get engaged? All the juicy details!
We met in high school. Chris was a senior and I was a freshman. He stopped me in the hall one day to chat and we started getting coffee at a Donut Connection nearby almost every evening. We started dating February 6, 2006, over 12 years ago!! We got engaged on December 23, 2016 right next to our first Christmas tree in our first apartment together. It was sweet and intimate. Chris was “wrapping presents” in the other room. When he came out with a big box, I thought nothing of it. I was in my pajamas watching “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (haha). He made me open the box immediately, and when I did, there were two things inside: another smaller box, and a bag of candy peach rings. I opened the next box and within it was another smaller box, and a bag of onion rings fresh from Sheetz. It was a peculiar choice…I opened the last box and within it was a candy Ring Pop. I had a feeling of what was next, but I expected it to be somewhere in the series of boxes. When I looked back at Chris, he pulled out a ring, said some very sweet words, and I said, crying, “Of course!!!”
Describe the engagement session and what inspired the shoot. What was unique about it?
We thought long and hard on the route we wanted to take for this shoot. We wanted it to be personal to us and to have a lot of our flair. We both love books and music and spend quite a lot of time at Half Price Books just perusing. We go there a lot when we can’t think of anything else to do. It’s sort of become a date location. We haven’t seen anyone else use this location for their photo shoot and we loved that! We also threw in some more of our own personalization, like bringing Donut Connection coffee to the shoot and finding Wes Anderson and Bill Murray-related books…a true foreshadow for our Wes Anderson movie themed wedding.
The whole experience was amazing and we were surprisingly comfortable in front of the camera, although I’m sure that’s thanks to Dawn for being so easy to talk to! Chris rarely smiles in pictures and says he hates them. But as soon as the camera was on him, with Dawn, he became a complete natural! That boy surely knows his angles! It was so much fun experiencing that with him and seeing his totally different side.
