This is a shout out to all my future grooms and at the same time a big thank you to Paola from Pink Pixel Photography and Alper from Alper Tunc Films.

I’ll try to sum up the whole story in a few words….

In mid-August, when I started planning the proposal, I asked my grandma if she had something special that I could use to start a tradition with! She left her living room and came back 5 minutes later with a huge golden double ring which held a light blue stone. She explained to me “this is your grandfather and my wedding ring, forged together after his death 15 years ago!”

It’s time to move on she said, with a tear coming down her cheek. I had no idea what to say except thank you, and I asked her gingerly if I could change anything, due to the size of the double ring! She replied of course, it would look ridiculous on her sweet small hands!

Six weeks later, the ring was finally finished. I picked it up and the jeweler told me it was a real beauty. I stored it in my flat mate’s room and kept going in to look at it until our trip to the north for some double date shooting with Paola & Alper. Paola and I are photographers, and Alper is a videographer. After a six-hour journey, we arrived at Paola & Alper’s place. We started their session immediately so Alice would see we were sticking to the plan – to photograph each other and to spend a day or two vacationing.

The next day was Alice and my photo shoot. Alper and I went to get some rolls for breakfast but had also been secretly filming some stuff for the proposal video. I was so nervous, that my palms were sweating like a waterfall. Finally back at their place, we all had one of our best breakfasts. The morning was just perfect, and so we headed to the shoot location. Paola told Alice that the weather was much different when we got to the ocean and that it’d be much, much better.

When we got there, it wasn’t too bad so we started shooting.

Not long after that, however, the weather started to get rough again.  Alice noticed something was strange about me and thought that it was just the weather pissing me off. It actually was  - because Alice also hadn’t been to the beach in three years, and, of course, because I the proposal to be perfect. We hopped into a coffee shop to wait it out and enjoyed a warm coffee and some delicious north German cake. We noticed it stopped raining and so we all decided to finalize shoot.

 Freezing, shivering and fighting against the wind, we were actually having so much fun shooting. While Paola was taking some single shots of Alice, I gave Alper the signal to secretly give me the ringbox. I then told Paola I had a pose idea and asked her to put a wide-angle lense on her camera.

Then it was time. I had prepared so many words for this special moment, but all I could get over my lips was a big fat “I love you, I love you so much that I wanna ask you if you would spend the rest of my life with me” – going down onto my knees in the meantime.

Alice’s first reply was, ”what are you doing there, get up, you’ll get your pants dirty”. Suddenly she realized what I had said and started bursting out in tears with a huge smile and a joyful “YES!”

When it was time to slide the old, borrowed and blue ring onto her finger, I shouted to Paola and Alper – which one!? The left one – the heart side. Next came the most special moment -  the first kiss as an engaged couple.

I just wanted to say a big thank you to Paola&Alper for capturing these perfect moments. 
Thank you!
It’s one of the coolest feelings to have all these images, specially as a photographer, just to have all these moments and feelings come back, when you start looking at the pictures. 
For me these are the most precious images in 2012!

Ps. If you’re wondering what the video looks like, we won’t show it here, cause we want it to be a part of our wedding day. Our families haven’t seen it yet, but I’m shure you’ll find it somewhere on the web if you really wanna see it.

The biggest thank you goes out to Alice for saying YES and being a part of my life and  a part of my future! Can’t wait to start planning our special day!
I love you!!