Our Dogs Crashed Our Engagement Pictures

We have two big crazy Labradors who we love to death, and who we take to the dog park every Saturday so they can run around and swim with other big crazy dogs until they pass out from exhaustion. Saturday morning at the dog park is the best part of the week! We chose Red Bud Isle dog park for our engagement pictures because it's one of our favorite places in Austin and because it is absolutely gorgeous.

Look how pretty it is!

But then came the predicament:

• Do we include our dogs in the pictures? "Awww they'd be so cute"
• Can we go to the dog park and not take our dogs? "That just doesn't seem fair to the dogs"
• Will they sit still for cute pictures with them? "Nope, they've got wiggly puppy energy"
• Will they jump up on us when we're trying to take pictures without them? "You betcha"

Our photographer was game for seeing how it went with the dogs, and just leaving them out if they weren't sitting peacefully for the camera. About 30 seconds after we got there, BOOM the dogs were in the water...

Smells like wet dog.

Since we had some drenched puppies on our hands, we decided it would be better to leave the dogs out of the pictures. Somehow the dogs didn't get that memo.

"Oh I'm sorry, were you trying to take a picture?"

After the pups had been for their morning swim, they decided we weren't paying enough attention to them. Well, we were trying to focus more on the nice lady taking our pictures.

"Play with me! Play with me!"

Thanks to the wet paws, jumping, and clamoring for our attention, most of our pictures have two features: wet jeans and dirty jeans.


Our lovely (and patient!) photographer also commented that she was constantly playing "where's the puppy butt", trying to keep the dogs out of the pictures. If you look carefully, you'll see some mysterious white lumps in the backgrounds.


Even with all the dog chaos, I think our engagement photos turned out beautiful BECAUSE we brought the pups with us. Most of the best pictures are of us laughing about the dogs' antics. They made us relax and natural in front of the camera because they make us happy ... and because we were more focused on preventing them from jumping on the photographer than on putting on a stiff smile for the camera. Looking at our engagement pictures reminds me of what our regular life looks like every day at home.

(All photos by Shannon Cunningham)