What a great way to kick off 2013's wedding season! It was absolutely freezing when I met up with Laura and David at the Christ Church Meadows, but, cheesy as this is to say, the two of them made the cold bearable.

One of the things I love so much about being a wedding photographer is the chance to meet the quirkiest, sweetest people and hear about their love stories. I love couples who, buffetted along on the whims of life, bump into each other. A love story that might never had happened if not for the unexpected quality of life.

Laura and David are one such couple. Laura, a Canadian, met David, a Chinese-Malaysian, while studying in Oxford. Over the years, as their relationship deepened, he took her to Malaysia, where they celebrated Chinese New Year with his family. In return, she took him to Canada, where they skied until it hurt to walk.

Phew! Folks, unfortunately we have come to the final part of Yuli and Ardyan's shoot. But talk about ending on a high note! As before, they went all out and prepared everything you could think of for a picnic engagement shoot. Yep, complete with a soft wool blanket, champagne, and all sorts of pastries. Have I told you how much I loved working with them?

We started out by taking a few pictures around Oxford before finishing with a picnic at Christ Church Meadows. To say it was freezing would not do justice to the teeth-chattering, bone-shaking cold that plagued us throughout the shoot. Wrapped in my thick winter coat, I still found myself shivering and stamping my feet every five seconds so they wouldn't go numb...so I can't imagine what it was like for Yuli and Ardyan to have to take off their coats for the pictures. But they did not complain once. I just wanted to put them in my pocket and keep them forever.

Without further ado, here is the final part of Yuli and Ardyan's engagement session.

2012 has been a great year for JQW. I've met many awesome couples, did an engagement session in Paris...PARIS! I'm still pinching myself over that one. But I have never, ever done an engagement session like this one.

The title of the post says it all. Yes, Ardyan actually popped the question to Yuli DURING the engagement session. It was literally an engagement shoot!

Ardyan contacted me about a month ago, wanting a "couples shoot". Along the way, he realized that he and Yuli would be in London, dressed to the nines...what better time to propose? He told me his plans, arranged for a couple of their friends to come by with champagne and flowers after the proposal, and we all waited with bated breath for the day to come. Talk about nerve-wracking!!

I'm sure I've mentioned before about how easy it is to fall in love with Yuli. She of the doe eyes and sweet nature. Having met her for five minutes, you just want things to go well for her. I saw the way total strangers smiled at her, and I knew Ardyan was wise to, as Beyonce says, "put a ring on it"! We started off the evening shoot with a few pictures at Peggy Porschen, surely the prettiest cafe there ever was...

French Wedding Style! The name of the website alone is enough to conjure up images of long walks along the Seine, macarons, and frothy wedding dresses made of tulle. Ooo la la! And now yours truly can proudly say that she's been featured on French Wedding Style, thanks of course to Helen and Chris, our delectable couple.

Merci beaucoup to the lovely Monique of French Wedding Style and to my fab couple Helen and Chris, not to mention Helen's sister, who helped carry our stuff throughout the shoot. Already I am missing Paris. Le sigh!

Guys! Guys. I have been so excited to share this three-part engagement session with you. That's right: THREE parts! Ardyan and Yuli booked me for two days, the first of which we spent in London and the second we spent in Oxford. When they first contacted me and told me about their ideas for the shoot, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Yuli and Ardyan met in Jakarta, over dinner with friends. Throughout the dinner, they paid little attention to each other, spending the mealtime chatting with other friends instead. It wasn't until afterwards, as they walked off the heavy meal, that the two found themselves gravitating to each other. At the end of the night, Ardyan worked up the courage to ask for her Blackberry PIN, and it was downhill from there.

I usually prefer to give my pictures the smallest tweaks to balance out the light and have the colors remain natural, but when Yuli, with her doe eyes and sweet smile, asked me to give Part One of their engagement shoot a vintage wash, I found that I could not say no. And I'm glad I went in this direction, because there's something about the vintage colors that's just so...uniquely them.

It is no secret how wedding-obsessed I am. I spend most of my mornings looking through wedding blogs, and more often than not, whenever I see a beautiful engagement shoot published on a wedding blog, there will always be comments along the lines of "I wish my hubs and I thought of doing an engagement shoot before we got married!" Well guys, maybe it's true that "engagement" shoots can only be taken before your wedding...but guess what: It's never too late to have beautiful pictures of you taken as a married couple! This is precisely why we have wedding shoots. Some photographers call them Beloved sessions, others call them wedding or post-wedding shoots. I call it "grabbing life by the cajones". ;)

Yvonne and Luke tied the knot last year, but didn't have a chance to be photographed in their wedding outfits. Rather than giving up the thought of being photographed in her luscious wedding dress, Yvonne arranged a time for them to have a wedding shoot after the wedding. Not only that, but after the shoot, they arranged for a wedding lunch with their friends and family. You see, Yvonne is from Hong Kong, and Luke is from Witney. They now live in Dubai, so you can see what a challenge it is for them to get their family and friends all together to celebrate their union. But they grabbed life by the cajones and made it happen.

Boy, was I ever so glad they did. I'm certain that Yvonne and I will remain friends long after their wedding shoot. Easy with her smiles, Yvonne has one of the most infectious laughs ever. Every time she laughed, I couldn't help but laugh along with her. And although she'd warned me that she's not very photogenic, once I saw her in person, looking like the personification of the word FABULOUS, I knew we were going to be juuuust fine.

She's a renowned chef in Jakarta, her French-style dishes and delicate cakes having grazed the pages of many magazine. He fell in love with her food before realizing that behind each sumptuous meal was the loving handiwork of a beautiful girl. They met over a bowl of noodles at a roadside stall, and through this humble beginning, their romance slowly took off. Three years later, here they are in Paris, doing their engagement shoot before they are due to get married next year.

Since French food played such a major role in their relationship, how apt that Helen and Chris would choose to have their engagement shoot in Paris. Standing amongst the intricately-carved buildings and curled metal balconies, I can see why Paris is known as the city of love. It is almost impossible to come across another city as decadent, with so many spots for couples to stroll down, hand-in-hand...

The beauty of Paris was only over-shadowed by the obvious affection that exists between Helen and Chris. Watching them interact with each other, effortlessly feeding each other bites of Laduree's Saint Honoré Rose-Framboise, I was pulled into their own little world, where all that exist are love and good food. And what more could anyone ask for?