CARMEL BEACH NGAGEMENT | PADEI + CHEE

Carmel Beach Engagement Session | Carmel, CA

Meet Padei and Chee! We had so much fun shooting this Carmel Beach engagement session for them. We roamed the streets looking for beautiful nooks and crannies then hit the beach for a fun run in the sand!

Padei is a teacher’s aid for one of the special ed teachers at the school where I teach. I had heard through another teacher that Padei was looking for a photographer for her November wedding. I reached out to her and gave her our wedding info and she was hooked! Padei called me ready to book us.

Padei and Chee will be getting married November 14, 2020 at The Pines Resort in Bass Lake. We can’t wait for their wedding. They are so many adjectives we could use to describe this couple. Adorable, fun, loving, genuine, joyful, witty…they are just the best! And wait until you hear their proposal story!

They met at Table Mountain Casino. He was a cook and she was a baker. Although they don’t have those jobs anymore, he still cooks while she makes dessert. Sounds like a match made in heaven to me!

About 6 years ago they took their first trip together to Carmel Beach. Having such an amazing time, they wrote each other love letters on a yellow piece of lined paper but didn’t let each other read the letters. The letters were put in a Dasani water bottle and BURIED! Without ever officially pinpointing exactly where they buried it, they just counted their steps from a random tree trunk!

Six years later, Padei was in the mood to take another get away to Carmel Beach, since it had been so long. Chee agreed and planned the trip. Padie’s step-sister was coming into town from out of state and her Step-Dad thought it would be a good idea if they took a family trip the same weekend that they were planning on going.

Padie thought “GREAT! We can make a family trip for the day but Chee and I will stay behind to enjoy the rest of our weekend”. Before you know it, Chee said that he “slipped” and told his family that they were going to Carmel, and since his family had never been there, they asked if they could join them and he couldn’t say no. What she thought was going to be a romantic weekend getaway now turned into a huge family trip!

When they arrived, Chee kept bugging Padie to go back to look for the buried Dasani water bottle. She brushed him off and telling him that it would be impossible to find it now. He was determined to “find it” and grabbed a shovel and took off!

He was gone for awhile so Padei and her sister walked to go use the restroom. When they arrived back at the site he was standing there with a Dasani water bottle in his hand with a yellow paper inside! Padei’s heart stopped. He pulled her over to the side and took out the note and read the words on the yellow paper, only they weren’t the words they had written 6 years before, no, they were Chee’s proposal!

Padie totally forgot that BOTH their families were there capturing this special moment for them. It turns out he had the ring for 6 months and had been planning this day for over a year!

Isn’t that the best story?? I absolutely LOVE a good proposal story.

It was an absolute MUST to take them back to Carmel for their engagement session. Todd and I arrived on Friday. It was our first trip out of town since October 2019! We scoped out some locations for the session and just soaked in the ocean air.

Padei and Chee arrived on Saturday to a very overcast, cold day. We were so disappointed that we wouldn’t have any glowy light, but it all worked out in the end. We had the BEST time walking the streets of Carmel and ending their session on the beach.

Enjoy scrolling through one of my favorite engagements sessions to date!