If you guys have been following my blog at all, you may have noticed that this styled shoot has been kept under wraps for quite some time! If you haven’t seen them yet, you can check out the first sneak peek here, and a behind the scenes look here. :) Well, it’s almost time for the big reveal! :)
Also, if you’ve been following my blogs, you will realize that I absolutely love a good story. :) As much as I love details and creativity, I absolutely love the story. I am a sucker for romance! Thus it made sense that for this styled shoot, I let my creativity take control and I created a love story for my two fictional characters, Alice & James Wong, posed by Sam Millare and Wilhelm Ong. I promise you, this is the last teaser before the full reveal of this styled shoot! But I wanted to give my readers and the followers of this shoot a little background story. Please excuse any cheesiness of this love story. I’m not a professional writer. ;)
The Love story of Alice & James Wong
Alice and James were childhood friends. Their parents were best friends who went to the same church from post-college years til after they had children. Alice was an only child, and James only had one other brother, who was 7 years older. James was 3 years older than Alice. Because of this large age gap between the brothers, James played with Alice a lot and they grew up as best friends–James always took care of Alice as an older brother would, since James’s older brother hung out with his own group. Since Alice was always around James, she grew up a bit of a tom boy, always coming home with scratches and bruises on her tiny frame from running around and chasing James.
When James went away to his first year of college, and Alice stepped into her second year of high school, Alice was scared that she wouldn’t have her best friend with her anymore. But for the first year of college, James would drive down every other weekend from school to come and hang out with her. Usually they would alternate going to coffee places and tea places. Alice loved tea, while James loved coffee, and as they tried to compete in trying to get the other person to like tea/coffee better, they would always start off their meeting mocking one another. Alice would always give James a disapproving look of disgust as he would order her different drinks at different coffee shops to try to change her mind. And James would mock Alice, saying that all the teas tasted the same–and were bitter and watery! Neither of them would budge. They spent a lot of time just hanging out, not doing much. Despite what everyone said–they thought their relationship was plutonic–brother and sister-like.
As Alice went through high school and detached herself from James, she made more friends that were girls, and also other girls at their church, she began to flourish and grow into a beautiful young lady–she started wearing dresses and skirts, even! During this same time, James grew a lot at a fellowship he joined in college and even became in charge of the mens ministry his Junior year.
Alice ended up going to the same college as James his fourth year (he ended up having to stay an extra year). So Alice and James went to college and reconnected for the first two years of Alice’s college life. Alice joined the same fellowship as James, and during this time grew a lot in her faith. As James started to see how Alice changed and had grown as she served their ministry, he started to change in his feelings towards her–and the once plutonic relationship slowly changed. James and Alice continued to get coffee/tea every other week, just catching up and talking about how things were going with their parents.
During this time, Alice started to grow some feelings for another guy in their fellowship that she worked closely with for ministry. As she ranted about him to James and how she was confused about her feelings, James held his tongue and prayed about his feelings for her and for clarity. Alice’s feelings for this other guy quickly faded away as summer came before her sophomore year.
That summer, James prayed as much as he could over his feelings, and tried to distance himself from her to help him clear his head. Alice had no idea about anything. When school started, James limited himself to coffee and tea with Alice once a month. Alice was a little hurt by this, but tried focusing on her ministry. She figured that perhaps he was just busy–and as she’d always persistently ask why he was so busy, James would just shrug it off. As sophomore year passed by for Alice, James realized that his feelings were still not going away, and decided to become more intentional about his feelings.
During their spring quarter, James and Alice had unknowingly signed up for the same Thailand missions trip at their home church that would leave shortly after their finals week. When they met for their tea and coffee and told one another, James was a little uneasy–would it be good for them to have to work so closely together when she didn’t know his feelings for her? & Now he felt that he couldn’t tell her because then it could potentially cause problems on the missions trip. So he decided to put off his feelings once again.
James became a co-leader for the missions trip, underneath one of the older men, Brian, in the church. Alice saw James’ leadership so clearly during this time, as he planned and organized much of the trip with Brian. Instead of seeing James as just her best friend, Alice began to see James as a godly man–and a leader. Now Alice’s feelings began to change as she saw James in a different light.
Once they got back home, Alice realized her feelings had changed, and this scared and complicated things for her. She didn’t think James liked her at all. Shortly after their return home, school started once again for Alice, and James started work–he found a job at an office near their college. When they met up for their next hang out, it was James’ turn to take Alice to a coffee shop. Alice was really hesitant and uneasy about it… but she went.
Because of her uneasiness and because of her thudding heart as she realized her feelings for James, when James asked how she liked her macchiato, Alice just smiled in a dazed look and said she liked it–which threw James off. “Are you okay? You hate coffee, remember?” Alice’s eyes widened as she realized that was what she had said and just went along with it… “Well… Thailand changed things…” They continued to talk more and when James dropped Alice back off at her apartment he went back to his and prayed about things.. something was different about their meet up. As he prayed he felt really heavy hearted over his feelings over her… He felt that God was pressing him to tell her how he felt… to finally have that dreaded DTR (Define The Relationship).
So that same night, James asked Alice to get dinner. “I have something important I realized I needed to talk to you about…” With this Alice freaked out a bit wondering what it was. She figured that he realized that she liked him. She was dreadinggggg “the talk”.
As they ordered dinner and started to talk, and after a ton of “uhhhh… welll”s from James, he finally got it out that he liked her, and that he had been praying about it for a year because he didn’t want to ruin their friendship. He didn’t want to lose her in his life. As he said these things, Alice’s brain went on pause–she was speechless. “well… this is awkward..” James had said after a couple of minutes, which shocked Alice back into speech. “Oh gosh, I thought you realized that I liked you.” Was all that came out. After a bit of awkward embarrassed-ness, they decided to talk with their parents and pray about it a little more before they officially decided to date–two days later, with great approval from their family and close friends, they decided to date.
While they dated, they began to serve together at their home church more often, and all the while, Alice served at their fellowship.
They continued on with their coffee and tea competition, and while neither of them budged, they thoroughly enjoyed their time together–doing devos and just hanging out with each other. After two years//when Alice graduated, they started talking about marriage. Three months out of college, James proposed.
It was supposed to be James’ turn to take Alice to a coffee shop during his 1 hour lunch break, he took her instead to a tea room that she had mentioned loving, that they had gone to before. She was quite happily surprised! They started off their date doing devotionals with some tea/sandwiches. During this entire time, James prayed so hard as his heart beat started to race, and his hands got sweaty. James ordered cupcakes for them to end their date with. When they came, one cupcake had a special surprise resting sweetly on top of it–Alice had no idea.
She didn’t see it when it came–they had been talking about what marriage means and she was still talking about her views about what her role would be in marriage. James checked his watch… he only had 15 more minutes and she was still finishing up talking–he tried to pretend to be interested, while inside, he was freaking out about what to say. How did she not see the sparkling ring? Oblivious much! When she was done, James awkwardly laughed and said, well.. these cupcakes look delicious! and Alice said, “Oh no! You only have 5 more minutes of your lunch break! we should just take these cupcakes to go!! Thank you so much!” She packed up her purse, still not seeing the cupcake–“-ALICE!” James almost shouted out of nervousness! She looked down onto the cupcake plate and finally finally saw the ring. She was astounded. “Oh my gosh!” she gasped, still looking at the ring–her eyes had teared.
When she looked up, James was getting down onto one knee. “Alice, I love you. As we have continued to just pray and seek God’s guidance in our relationship… I have felt more and more certain of my desire to marry you, and be with you for the rest of my life… Will you marry—” “YES! Oh my gosh yesss!” Alice cut him off before he even finished proposing. As they hugged, tears streamed down her face, and joy filled James. “OH! Oh my gosh!” Alice realized the time! “You’re going to get in troubleee!!!” GET TO WORK!!” She grabbed her bag, and he paid for their check and dropped her back off at her house. He was definitely late–but his boss was okay with it.
A year later, they got married! WOOO!!! The theme of their wedding was: *drumroll please* Afternoon to Twilight Tea & Coffee!
And thus, our whimsical Afternoon to Twilight Tea & Coffee inspired wedding shoot began! :) Here’s another look at the beautiful Alice, and the dashing James.
If you’d like to stay caught up with this styled shoot, visit my Facebook Page and become a fan to get updated on when the large reveal is made! :) You can also check out some of my real weddings here!
Happy Friday everyone! :)