Ben and I are thrift store people. Always have been. Our apartment is full of flea market finds, reclaimed wood furniture and lots of little artifacts we’ve found throughout the years together. In fact I found that shirt I’m wearing in the photos below at a thrift store in Tucson, Arizona. So when our photographer Mel Barlow pulled us into a nearby antique store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to snap a couple photos, we were totally in our element! (Later, we changed it up and took engagement photos in a retro airstream trailer — also featured today on Brooklyn Bride!)

After getting kicked out of the thrift store, we made our way to a nearby diner where Mel had found a retro airstream trailer. We changed our outfits and captured an entirely different vibe.

More!

> Retro Airstream Engagement Photos

> Engagement Photo Basics

> A Bridesmaid Proposal Video

]]> http://blog.theknot.com/2013/04/30/thrift-store-engagement-photos/feed/ 6 http://i1.wp.com/xotheknot.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/thriftstore4_650.jpg?resize=214%2C148 http://blog.theknot.com/2013/04/30/thrift-store-engagement-photos/ http://blog.theknot.com/2013/04/29/airstream-engagement-photos/ http://blog.theknot.com/2013/04/29/airstream-engagement-photos/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:28:16 +0000 Anja Winikka http://blog.theknot.com/?p=29090 ]]>

I’m a huge fan of fashion photography-inspired engagement photo shoots. So when it came to finding inspiration for my own, I found it within the pages of a Jon Hamm and Rebecca Hall W Magazine photo shoot. Moody, sexy and real all rolled up into one — total engagement photo shoot material. That in mind, our crazy awesome photographer Mel Barlow scouted in and around Brooklyn until she found an authentic silver air stream parked in the back of a nearby diner. Ben and I love diners and we’re a big fan of cross-country road trips, so the fact that we got to have our photos in an airstream trailer in the back of a Brooklyn diner was beyond perfect. Enough of my rambling though — onto the photos!

Fun right? Before we shot here in the airstream, we popped by a local Brooklyn thrift store for an entirely different style of photos for our album. Check out my engagement photos in a thrift store here. (PS – These and more are featured on Brooklyn Bride today!)

Want More?

> Engagement photos 101

> 8 Tips To Getting The Wedding Photos You Want

> A Will You Be My Bridesmaid Video

Evin and I live in Brooklyn. We met in Brooklyn. A short film I wrote about how we met was set and shot in Brooklyn.

So we sat at our computers giving The Google quite the workout to find a place for us to get married in our beloved Brooklyn.

The 1st place we found had lots of things going for it. It was located near the water and with sweeping views of Manhattan. My cousin attended a wedding there last year and raved about it. But my cousin is 24 and easily impressed and would’ve raved about a wedding at Denny’s. When we went to Yelp, people wrote nice things about the place. But great reviews on Yelp were always dubious. For all of the positives, the place had a truckload of negatives, too. The room held 500 and we would’ve been swimming in with out puny little wedding of 100. They also had a ridiculous minimum which meant we might end up having to invite 3rd cousins, ex girlfriends and boyfriends, co-workers, and neighbors — both former and current just to pad the list. And to make matters worse, they wanted us to pay for a coat check person (to take the coats of hats for our July wedding?) and, expected us to spring for their bathroom attendants so our guests could have a paper towel and a mint handed to them. No thanks to that and no thanks to the venue.

The huge restaurant in Williamsburg was beautiful. We knew a couple who got married there and they had good things to say about it. The food was terrific, the staff was nice on our Sunday night visit, but they too had a large minimum which was prohibitive. What is it with the large minimums?  Plus, the only date they had available was in late August.

Then there was the hip, new hotel-of-the-moment, also in Williamsburg.  But they never returned our phone calls. And when we happened to be in their neighborhood and stopped in to ask if we could get a tour, the snooty full of herself front desk clerk told us no one was available to do it. So we left unhappy and disillusioned.

And so we kept looking but ended up being disillusioned with every place we saw.  Brooklyn, it appeared, was not to be.

Queens and Staten Island were both out. So we set our sights on Manhattan. Just to kick the tires we called The Pierre Hotel — $575 per person. We’re still laughing about that one.

But we ended up discovering a bunch of great places which we felt might work. So we called them all, made appointments go come visit, and found a rare weekday off to do this.  We wished we were done looking but alas, we were not…