Oh, Nelly, we are feeling the love around here! With the engagement shoots we’ve been getting, every day is starting to feel like Valentine’s Day around here. Case in point, today’s engagement session from Daniela DeGrassi. Rose and Dylan are playful, stunning, and, yes, generate some serious heat.

And, what a variety of settings! (Full disclosure: I live in San Francisco so I have a bit of an affinity for the place). There’s the beach, the lake at the Palace of Fine Arts, foggy cliffs and, my personal favorite, the Jazz murals, where it feels like the portraits are almost a part of the shoot.

Make sure to keep reading after the photos as today we have something we don’t often have – the proposal from the Groom’s perspective…

Dylan talks about the proposal

The plan was…well, there were so many plans that got left in the planning room for one reason or another. Some of them were wildly original, while others were merely simple and sentimental. What finally transpired was a pared down version of something I thought of on a walk that she and I had taken more than a year ago to a place called Crocker Park. A quaint little neighborhood park, Crocker was the urban surbananite’s minimalist tribute to the outdoors, with its delightfully manicured rolling hills of green grass and tidily trimmed shrubs, neatly tucked in at the corner of Hampton Road and King Avenue in Piedmont. There is but a single park bench along the path that bisects the field of green which is where it was all going to go down.

I was going to coax her into going for a walk together one evening after work. That wouldn’t be hard because she loved doing stuff like that. Getting her to drive about 18 miles before taking that walk would be a challenge, but she always enjoyed a surprise. We would park the car and walk and talk and enjoy the majestic views and then take a break at the aforementioned green slatted wooden seat. It would be there that I would feign an untied shoe. Dropping to a knee to rectify that situation, I would produce something shiny from my jacket pocket and reach for her left hand as I looked into her eyes and began to speak. At precisely  the moment when she would be overcome by emotion, I would have enlisted one of my co-conspirators, dressed in a black suit, and donning a ceremonial towel on one arm, bottle of champagne in one hand, and flutes in the other. I had even entertained the thought of having  several of our other friends emerge from hiding to immediately offer congratulations.

Mother Nature and her tempestuous infant son El Nino had other ideas. It seemed to rain for 18 or 19 days straight. Meanwhile, I noticed that she was becoming visibly stressed out with wedding planning. Eager to bring back that million dollar smile that I adore so much, I knew that there was no more time to wait.

Thanks to the wonders of SMS text messaging, I was able to notify a friend discreetly while watching the game that Operation Ring was being put into action immediately. Weather did not permit the walk so I had to go with the element of surprise.

Cool and un-assuming, I stole off to the kitchen to do the dishes as she sat watching Niece Nash and the new cast of Clean House: Messiest Homes in America. When I got the text that my accomplice had reached our parking lot, I discreetly disappeared to the hall bathroom that just so happens to be adjacent to our front door. There I sat and waited patiently.

A little earlier, I had placed a bottle of Freixenet champagne and accompanying flutes on our porch. The doorbell rang as I sat patiently in complete silence. I could tell that she was trying to ignore it and wait for me to see who it was. When she realized that I wasn’t available to answer it she went to the door. Bathroom door still closed, I could not see what must’ve been a look of utter bewilderment on her face as our friend was standing there announcing his intention to help celebrate the good news, flutes and bottle of bubbly in outstretched hands. Still confused, she turned to look and see me kneeling behind her with a little red box sitting in my left hand, and being opened by my right…