Oakley | Cincinnati, OH I have been dying to do an engagement session in Oakley and I finally got my chance.  I live among all these wonderful picture spots but I have never had the chance to take anyone’s picture here.  When Ian and Nick said they were open to suggestions I quickly said “OAKLEY!”

I met Ian and Nick when they won a free engagement session in a contest I sponsored by Aviva Events.  We sat down to talk about their wedding and we immediately knew we were a great fit for each other and they decided to book Fyrefly for their wedding too:)  I have so much to say about how great they are but I want to leave room for an incredible story that Ian told me while on our walk.  If you can, take a minute to read her story below the pictures.

First, some of my favorites from our time together:

And here is the story about Ian’s grandmother:

“My grandmother was Hungarian.  When she was 8 or 9, her family fled Budapest and headed towards a smaller town where they owned a farm.  A few years after that, as the war situation got worse, they fled the small town and lived in a cave in the woods and a barn’s hay loft for about 3 years.  My grandma told me that she remembers wearing out the soles of her shoes on her walk out of the small town and that the German planes bombed the people as they were leaving.   She laughed when she told me about how her mother threw her into a ditch and opened a red umbrella above them in an attempt to protect them from the bullets and bombs.  It was also during this exodus that her brother was captured by the Germans and forced to join their army.

Along with her family, my grandmother eventually made her way to a displaced persons camp near Austria. Their her family enjoyed many freedoms as her mother and grandmother were nurses and her grandfather was a doctor.  One of the freedoms my grandmother enjoyed most was being able to visit the Austrian library and that is where she met my grandfather, who was a professor and 25 years older than her.  She was about 16 or 17 at that time.

Grandma caught Tuberculosis while in the camp and had to stay for an extra year until she was healthy enough, and cleared to leave.  She and her mother sailed across the ocean to New York where my grandfather met my grandmother with a huge bouquet of roses.

My Great-Grandmother would not let my grandmother marry until she was 21.  So, for 4 years, my grandfather patiently courted my grandma.  According to the stories my grandmother told me, her grandmother had to chaperon her dates!  Grandma would tell me, “She’d make sure to take her time, “smelling the roses” so that we had a little time to neck.”

Finally, in 1952, my grandmother and grandfather were married. They honeymooned in New York, where my grandfather bought my grandmother the skirt I wore for our engagement pictures.  On the way home from their honeymoon, they were in a bad car accident.  The doctors told my grandmother she’d never be able to have children.  Five years later, she had my mom.  A few years after that, my uncle.”

Sadly, my grandfather died from radiation exposure in 1962.  He was an engineer and was exposed while inspecting a plant up near Sandusky, Ohio.  My grandma later remarried.  By the time she passed, my grandmother had buried both of her husbands and her youngest son.  Of my four grandparents, I was closest to my grandmother.  This past March, with her family surrounding her, she quietly passed away.  My greatest hope for my marriage is that I am able to love Nick as unconditionally as my grandmother loved her first husband before and after he passed.”