I came across Jess and Red’s wedding portraits on Instagram a few weeks ago from Chris Nachtwey Photography and I was privileged enough to receive their engagement shoot as well as their wedding (which you’ll get to see in a few weeks – I love making you wait!)
We met when I was 13, in my neighbourhood. He was skating around like a bad ass and I fell in love. I didn’t see him again until I was 21, and we had such a great connection… we dated for a few months and then we split up because we both had been fresh out of long term relationships and knew we weren’t ready to have each other yet-it was real. We stayed close friends, I talked crap about dudes that split up with me to him, always able to be honest, and one day just got the guts to ask him back out, (with a song on my guitar), and the rest is history!
Actually that was so unique! Halloween is my favourite holiday and so he planned to ask me on Halloween. We were going to Northampton, Massachusetts to see my favourite two bands The Ryan Montbleau Band and The Alchemystics, and he had planned to ask me during a particular song… He had ordered a custom made charm bracelet from a lady in the UK that was a zombie survival charm bracelet – very fitting for a girl like me! He had it in his pocket as we were going into the show and the security checking us in asked him to empty his pockets. I was standing right there so he cunningly said, “Oh I have my knife in my pocket.” I’m like, “Why did you bring a knife to a show? Go put it outside.”
So he went back to the car and little did I know that it was not a knife. So we saw the band play and apparently he was trying the whole time to figure out what he was going to do… After Ryan Montbleau played, he asked me if I wanted to get some air, so we went outside, and we were chatting for awhile, and he looks at his foot and goes, “Hey hun, what is this?” I’m like, “I don’t know, what are you talking about?” and I crouch down to take a look and I see that he just got down onto one knee. I started screaming, haha, saying “Are you for real?!?!” He’s like, “Oh yeah, this is real!”and then he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, under the street lights in Northampton. Mind you… I was dressed up as a creepy sad haunted doll for Halloween, so as happy as I was, I sure looked so sad. It was pretty funny – whenever I tried to smile, he would laugh! The whole group of people standing outside the show started clapping and cheering for us, it was very cool.
We tattoo for a living, and in our profession when a couple gets matching tattoos or their names on each other, we joke with them and say, do you want to make another appointment to cover it? We’ve covered a lot of names in our career. So he always joked with me and said that if he comes home with my name on him then I should know its over. Haha!!
How cute are Jess and Red? Thank you to them both and to Chris Nachtwey Photography for sharing with Marry Me Ink today – Make sure you come back for their wedding in a few weeks!
