I photographed Sarah and Max’s engagement session at Green Spring Gardens earlier this year and I am so excited to finally share it with you now!

If you follow my work or browse through my website, it’s pretty clear that I think Green Spring Garden is one of the best engagement session locations in Northern Virginia; I even have a highlight page on my site all about this beautiful garden venue. It’s truly a hidden gem and always a pleasure to return. One benefit to returning to this location is being able to immediately know the best spots including some hidden gems; for example, at Christy and Kyle’s engagement session I had realized that on beautiful sunny evenings when we were photographing at golden hour, I could get incredible golden hour light in a surprising spot near the parking lot – somewhere I typically would avoid shooting, but in this case could disguise pretty well. With Sarah and Max’s session, I was able to revisit that spot for another perfect golden hour and with fresh eyes I was able to perfect my technique shooting here and wow did the photos turn out magical! (You’ll find them below with the tall skinny trees in the background – you’d never know the parking lot is right behind them!)

As you can imagine, it can sometimes feel like a challenge to go back to the same location so often and find ways to make it feel fresh and unique each time; but we got so lucky with Sarah and Max’s session because we hit the jackpot with peony season at the park! I had never been to Green Spring Gardens while peonies were in bloom and I was in heaven getting to photograph the park with this abundance of stunning flowers, to use for ring detail photos and in the background/foreground of our portraits. I am definitely keeping this knowledge in my back pocket for future spring sessions!

It also helps that Sarah and Max were the absolute cutest couple. They drove up from the Fredericksburg area for our session, and we spend nearly 2 hours together photographing around the park. They were totally unafraid to do all the dreamy romantic dips, lifts, kisses and snuggles to get that signature romantic vibe that they hired me for, and it clearly paid off. They absolutely radiated joy (and spoiler alert – the same was true on their wedding day just a couple months later!) and their courage with being in front of the camera together made my job so easy.

As a Catholic wedding photographer, it’s always a special pleasure to work with clients who share my faith and values. Sarah and Max were married at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fredericksburg a few months after this session, followed by a reception at Stevenson Ridge, and I can’t wait to share their wedding photos on the blog soon! (Update: you can view their incredibly sweet and fun wedding day on the blog here!)