Tanealle & Courtney

As soon as I saw that Tanealle and Courtney had included their two four legged friends in their romantic sunset love shoot I was smitten. What’s better than sunsets and puppy dogs? Emma Nayler captured the most stunning golden sunset for these two that set the most magical scene. And wait until you hear their proposal- because it gave me goosebumps!

The happily engaged pair met almost ten years ago, Tanealle remembering their tale. “We’re high school sweethearts! We first met in grade nine and didn’t really know much about each other until halfway through the year when we started interacting through a mutual friend. We quickly became extremely close and from there, our friendship developed into something neither of us were quite sure of. Neither of us really had any knowledge of same-sex relationships, both of us being brought up in Christian families thought that this wasn’t something that we knew to be accepted.
So we kept things quiet and let our relationship develop. Before we knew it we had finished school, been to university and started to build our adult lives together in secret. Quickly realising we couldn’t continue down that road, we knew it was time to talk to our families. Telling our friends and family five years into our relationship was extremely tough but obviously necessary to continue our lives together. Once we had done that we couldn’t contain ourselves and quickly started talking about getting married, we didn’t care that it wasn’t legal at that point we just wanted our special day!
Here we are almost 10 years to the day planning our wedding! It’s been a crazy ride with a lot of downs but an incredible amount of highs and I wouldn’t change any of it for the world.”

“Some of my favourite memories of Court and I are of us singing and dancing in the kitchen which is honestly most nights while we are cooking dinner and cleaning the house and god we have fun doing it.” says Tanealle.

On what they love about another another, Tanealle notes “I love that we are so raw and open with each other. Being in a relationship that started out as best friends there’s still nothing we don’t talk about or share with each other. We still stay up some nights laughing and talking about all the things that have been and all the things to come. I know growing up and finding ourselves together is something alot of people don’t get to experience, I am so grateful that we got to.”

       

The couple were engaged in the city of love- Paris! Tanealle tells “We had been talking about getting married for so long and we had just started planning a trip to Europe to see our best friend who had moved there a few years beforehand. The first thing I thought of was what a perfect time to propose! I went and picked out the ring and tucked it away somewhere she wouldn’t just stumble across, and off we went on the trip of a lifetime to see some of the sites of Europe with our best friend and her new husband.
I had decided to propose in Paris because why not do it in the most romantic city in the world? Under the Eiffel Tower at night of course.
The night came around and we stopped off to see the Arc de Triomphe on the way to the Eiffel Tower. You could see the tower from the top and it was such an incredible experience. At one point I turned to Courtney to express my excitement and what else do I see but her standing there with a ring in a little purple box asking me to marry her! I could not believe what was happening! Needless to say I said yes and the trip was shaping up to be one we couldn’t imagine we could top. Little did Court know there was a surprise in my pocket.
Under the Eiffel Tower, we stood newly engaged but only one of us with a ring on. I knelt down and with the biggest grin on my face pulled out the ring I had had stowed away for this exact moment. She was ecstatic!! We laughed so hard because we couldn’t believe we had both brought rings and planned to propose on the exact same night.”