Katrina and Marty

There’s nothing like a lazy day floating down the river on a row boat with your loved one, watching the world go by.  Anna Selent sent over the engagement shoot of Katrina and Marty who took to the Yarra River in a rowboat for their photographs.

“We knew each other only as acquaintances through our involvement in the same church here in Melbourne. Unknown to Marty, I was then engaged to be married to someone else overseas. Having been single for a while, Marty was surprised at how he always looked forward to seeing me at church, if only to say hello, but nobody was to know. When I moved back to the Philippines in 2009, it really hit Marty and he thought he would never see me again.”

Marty chimes in’ “Months after I thought Katrina was gone forever, I felt God telling me through prayer to travel to the Philippines for a church conference, which God whispered would also serve to bring me one step closer to meeting ‘the one’. For some reason, I remembered Katrina. Whilst I booked a ticket and made preparations for the conference, I did not know that she had been recovering from her broken engagement, and was already preparing to move back to Melbourne. One Sunday morning, I walked into church as usual and saw the back of what I thought might be her sitting in a pew. I ran out of church hyperventilating and when my pastor came out to see if I was ok, I asked him to confirm to me whether it was Katrina or not, and when he said, ‘yes’….I knew from that moment I would do anything to be married to her one day. It was as if a dream I once had that vansihed just suddenly re-appeared in full colour!”

“It took me three months after Katrina arrived back to Melbourne to ask her out on our first date. Right up to that time, I was making deliberate attempts to be at every church gathering that I thought she would be in…without her even knowing I had feelings for her. I plucked up the courage to ask her out for ‘a meal’, which she thought would be a burger at McDonalds.

I took her to a candle-lit dinner in Williamstown by the pier where I nervously stated my feelings for her. After a long silence, I was blown away when she reached out for my hands and told me that she too had been prayerfully considering me, after recently waking up from a dream she had about being married to me.”.

“After church one Sunday, I whisked her off into the city where we walked around and revisited some of our favourite hangout spots when we were courting. When Katrina’s feet started to get sore from walking in heels all day, and she went to buy a pair of comfortable shoes at a shop on Spencer Street, I took the opportunity to run out and round up a horse drawn carriage, which she found waiting for her as she stepped out of the shop. As we rode on the carriage through the city, I got down on two knees and asked her to be my wife. We were both in tears as she said an emphatic “YUP!”.