I booked Melissa for a surprise proposal. She was incredible from start to finish! Melissa was both helpful and insightful about planning which was much appreciated. She made several suggestions that truly helped make this a success. The images themselves are beautiful -- they blew us and our families away. Melissa made the portraits following the engagement absolutely seamless and definitely fun! I am so glad to have been able to work with Melissa through this process and now, as a newly engaged couple, we are very excited to continue working with Melissa for more events milestones to come.

My fiance and I got engagement photos with Melissa here in DC for our destination wedding. We were very specific in what we wanted (sunrise at the monuments in DC) but for everything else, Melissa was a wealth of knowledge. During our meet and greet, she asked purposeful questions about our wedding planning, what we envisioned for the photos, what we were planning on using the engagement photos for, and so on. After the meet and greet, she had us sign a straight-forward contract (no googling if something was weird in the contract or not) and then sent us a very long questionnaire to get to know us better and know what we wanted (and didn't!) with our photos.

Prior to our shoot, there were hiccups - the park service permitting system is An Experience to Deal With, there were forecasted storms, there was a surprise event being set up that completely hid the Lincoln Memorial with scaffolding, and there were more runners than you ever expect at 6:30am. But Melissa made us feel cool and comfortable; she told us exactly what to do, where to look, what to do with our hands; she even asked permission each time before going over and adjusting my hair or fingers or something. I appreciated that she respected my autonomy and made us look great without feeling like dolls being moved around. She is great to talk with, and she made the shoot go by so fast.

The only things I would improve upon are things I didn't know to mention until we got our photos back - most of the photos are vertical, when our website (where we're hosting most of the images) wants horizontal; most of the photos one of us is gazing away, and so there's only so many photos of us posed looking straight on; and there are a LOT of kissing photos (which I'm less likely to use for a Save the Date to send to my granny). Those aside, all of which I didn't even know to mention until after I got the photos back, I'm sure she would have adjusted prior to the shoot had I mentioned in the questionnaire. I know this because there were things I mentioned in the questionnaire I didn't like, and she never even brought them up.

All in all, I'm really happy with our engagement photos and I would certainly use Melissa if I was getting married locally. She made us look great and feel great, and after our shoot with her it made being engaged feel Actually Real.

When my (now) husband and I were looking for a photographer for our wedding, we wanted to find someone who's style/pictures we loved, and also someone that we got along well with. Melissa brought all of that and more to our engagement shoot, wedding day, and all of the planning leading up to the wedding day. She was organized and took the time to really get to know us, which came through in all of our wedding pictures. She created a VERY helpful timeline, and made sure to capture all important groupings of friends/family on our wedding day. Most importantly, she made us feel extremely comfortable in front of the camera. We don't love getting pictures taken of us, but Melissa helped to guide us in a natural way, and helped to make sure that we not only felt comfortable, but that we had fun throughout the photo taking as well. I am so happy to have had Melissa with us on our wedding day! She has a client for life - we are already talking about having her take pictures of our extended family when we eventually get a dog :) Thank you again Melissa - and to all brides searching for a wedding photographer, you are in excellent hands if you choose to go with Melissa!