….also known as The Day Janelle Froze, Literally and Figuratively.

It didn’t take much for me to convince my not-so-center-of-attention-loving brother that I had to take his engagement pictures…that I was going to force him to make googly eyes and kiss his soon-to-be bride in front of my lens whenever I told him to…that for once, just once, his little sister was going to force him to do whatever she said and wear whatever she wanted him to without complaint (Can you tell how long I’ve waited for this to happen?!)  It was actually insanely easy to get Mr. “I Hate Having My Picture Taken” to agree to this.  All I had to do was not breathe one single word of my idea to my brother, and just plan the whole thing with his fiancé.  The poor boy was blindsided when we dragged him outside the day after Thanksgiving and forced him to do a photoshoot instead of watch football.   I wish I had Stephanie around years ago when I was trying to convince him that we should watch Kids Incorporated instead of WWF.  Luckily, his fiancé is insanely gorgeous and the two are so in love that he went willingly.

Unfortunately, in all our sneakiness, we overlooked one minor detail in planning the day: November in Upstate New York is not warm.  And the day we picked happened to be the coldest of the cold days.  So cold that I think my brain froze–I couldn’t think of one single pose to tell the two to do when we first got there. Luckily, after a quick swig of hot chocolate that my genius mom packed for us, my brain defrosted just long enough to start directing these two lovebirds, and as you can see, they totally rocked it.  I love that snow fell mid-shoot.  Even though my hand nearly froze off, it made for such pretty scenery for these two beautiful people.

Have I mentioned that I hit the sister-in-law jackpot?  Not only is Stephanie incredibly sweet, but she has this amazing way of pretending like she doesn’t notice how crazy my family is, and best of all, she loves my brother. What more could a girl ask for?

We’re hoping they’ll have better weather at their June 28th wedding at the Rochester Yacht Club!

PS:  I love that they chose to use a photo I took for their save-the-date.  I was so excited to get this in the mail!