Engagements are beautiful moments: the joy, the excitement, and the wonder are the stuff dreams are made of. And when you take all those emotions and set them in the middle of a breathtaking sunrise in the Northern California Mountains, it moves from beautiful to downright magical.

For Matt + Rachel, this past weekend was full of exactly that kind of magic.

Matt and Rachel started dating back in January, and hit it off quickly. So quickly, in fact, that everyone around them had known for some time the beauty this relationship was destined for. That meant Matt had a challenge on his hands: how to make the proposal a surprise for Rachel!

That’s when Matt and his brother-in-law, the talented Jesse Eckel of Own & Tree Films, got to planning an amazing caper… one that Rachel would never suspect!

Knowing how much Rachel loved photography and creativity, Matt and Jesse concocted a scheme where Jesse would advertise a free wilderness adventure shoot on his Facebook page:

Just as they suspected, Rachel took the bait:

Once Jesse had “chosen” Matt + Rachel for the shoot, the guys let Rachel take over the planning process for “Jesse’s” shoot. Little did she know, she was planning her own engagement!

I flew out to Sacramento late Friday night, with the shoot scheduled for sunrise Saturday morning. We woke up at 5:00am to discover a cold front had blown through… temps were down in the 20’s (more like -5º with windchill… brr!)!!! But nothing was going to stop Matt from his mission to ask his dream girl to marry him!

-5º windchill is no problem when you’ve got love to keep you warm!

The legendary Jesse Eckel of Owl & Tree Films

Jesse ran ahead to “scout” a “potential” location (aka let Matt + Rachel’s friends know it was showtime, hide the ring, etc), so I took a few “test shots” of the couple in a nearby meadow to distract Rachel.

Once everyone and everything was in place, Jesse came back to tell the couple he’d found the perfect spot. WOWZA was it breathtaking. And that’s when the magic began to unfold…

“Hey Rachel… this moment is pretty perfect.”

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if my friend Dillon just came out from behind a tree and started serenading us?”

“…and wouldn’t it be even MORE amazing if YOUR best friends popped out from behind that rock over there?”

“Rachel Christina King… will you marry me?”

That would be a “YES” ????????

Best friends freeze for hours to see their friends get engaged!

The entire moment was perfect, and executed to perfection by Matt and his friends. And for the briefest of moments, we all forgot how frigid it was outside, basking in the warmth of an epic love story that had just launched into its newest chapter.

But that’s just the proposal. We’ll be back on Tuesday with a glimpse into the beautiful couple’s Adventure Engagement photos!