J&L’s Sunset Proposal at Pillar Point Bluff in Half Moon Bay

On the evening of their third anniversary, J brought L (and their very energetic golden retriever) to one of her favorite places, the Pillar Point Bluff in Half Moon Bay, for a very special question he had in mind for her. With haze from the recent wildfires giving color to the sky above them and trees and cliffs along the shoreline behind them, the setting was absolute perfection.

We had a bit of a mishap that ended up making this all the more memorable. J had hired us for photos only, but I wanted to see if I could get a video clip for them as a little surprise. So we had hidden a small video camera in the bushes in front of them and wedged a sound recorder into the ledge on the cliff behind them. Well… their golden retriever helpfully scouted ahead of her humans and retrieved the recorder immediately. Most of the video consists of her running back and forth excitedly in front of her humans, happily playing with her new toy, and because the recorder was in her mouth, the audio is mostly PANT PANT PANT PANT run run scratch PANT 😂 But she did pause for long enough for the audio to pick up the most important bit: “Will you marry me?” + “Yes!”

By the way, only the last three photos here are posed — all of the proposal photos, happy dog and all, are the realest of real moments. Congrats to J&L on their beautiful engagement!