Tamra and Josh celebrated their engagement with – you guessed it – engagement photos, and there were so many great photos from their session – especially in black and white. Amongst the forest of trees with love and adoration in their eyes, we settled in for their engagement session and I was so pleased with all of the images. The young, and madly in love couple, kissed under a sunset of swirling clouds, and it completely capture the romance of their entire story.
Tamra and Josh met when they were in year 8 at Temple Christian College, and shared most of their classes until year 12 in 2010. “We didn’t get to know each other for a while as I spent the first six months of high school travelling overseas – but when I got back we slowly started getting more and more classes and subjects together, and started becoming close friends.” Said Josh. “After years of becoming close friends and discovering we had the same sense of humour, interest and dreams for the future, it almost became inevitable that we’d end up together.”
“The proposal had been in the works for a little while and I’d planned to ask pretty soon after she arrived home from a 3 month university placement in Cambodia.” But when his Dad asked wether he was going overseas as well, he realised he had just enough time in his university timetable to make the trip for her birthday.
As with most surprise engagements, this one didn’t quite go to plan. While completing her last Occupational Therapy placement overseas (so interesting) Tamra and her friends were around decided to spend her birthday weekend in Siem Reap. First issue – their tuk-tuk to the hotel was a half hour late. Then, despite impatient friends, Tamra stayed longer after checking in to organise their must see destinations. “I obviously didn’t understand the rush, but gave in to settle in our room first.” When her friends told her they were on the fourth floor, she complained about carrying her things that far upstairs, and the receptionist must have heard and corrected her to say they were on actually on the second floor. Surprise issue number 3!
After quickly unpacking, Tamra said she was going back downstairs to book the tours. “One of my friends kept looking out the window and said ‘apparently you can see the temples from the hotel balcony.” Tamra waved her off, said she’d see it later, but her friends insisted on going, and raced up the stairs. She didn’t want to be left out so she reluctantly went too. “When I got to the balcony, I quickly glanced over to see a man who wasn’t Cambodian and didn’t think much of it, until I realised he was looking at me! It took a few overwhelming minutes to realise it was Josh and that he had come over to surprise me for my birthday!”
With all the delays, poor Josh had been waiting on the balcony of the Cambodian hotel, under the blistering sun for over 2 hours! Managing to conquer the language barrier, he had organised a table with flowers, and wooden letters spelling ‘J LOVES T’. In her own words; “After some ‘why are you here’ questions and some soppy love talk, on bended knee he asked me to be his wife!”
Tamra love’s Josh’s kind heart and they always manage to turn things into a competition. “We love board games, going to the beach, and having hot chips and gravy at Harndorf.” Josh says ‘I love how caring she is, she also doesn’t have the ability to laugh, she can only cackle with the occasional snort!” I can imagine that cackle happening as Tamra tells us “When Josh wins, he gloats, and nicely sings an insult at you, then does this goofy happy Michael Jackson dance in the kitchen.” Clearly Tamra, you are letting him win too many board games heheh! Wishing you both smooth wedding planning and a very happy life together xx
