As soon as she said yes,

they had the date saved.

Patrick & Mitali

They were already engaged,

and there were two big weddings

planned back in their home towns in India. But this wasn’t an engagement shoot. Patrick never got the chance to propose to the love of his life and he was dead set on doing so. So they got dressed up and we were on the hunt for cherry blossoms.

It was April in New York and that can be cold. Cross the Hudson into northern Jersey and it can get pretty windy, especially at Liberty State Park where we were finally able to satisfy Mitali’s desire to get some photos with the beautiful pink flowered trees. I started at Branch Brook Park where the the beloved Cherry Blossom Festival is held annually. As per usual I showed up early to make sure the scene was open enough to grab some shots. Sure enough it wasn’t, so I contacted the both of them and told them to pivot to Liberty State Park, about 10 miles east.

I was familiar with the surroundings from my first ever proposal I captured there back in 2019. What I didn’t know was that there were Cherry Blossoms there as well. And sure enough when you do good things, good things happen to you. We happened upon the coveted trees as we were exploring this grand park. Golden hour was settling in and while the wind was intense most of the time, Mitali was an amazing sport about it as she insisted in getting beautiful shots of her in her luscious red dress alongside her best friend.

I say it all the time that energy is everything when photographing people. Their energy was infectious, right through the end of the shoot when Patrick finally dropped to a knee to ask Mitali a question he already knew the answer to.