Romantic Rose Garden & City Rooftop Engagement Session in June
Had the best evening with Rachel and Patrick at the Clare & Miles Mills Rose Garden and the Des Moines Art Center for their sweet engagement session. I just love the architecture and gardens in this place, ugh so beautiful. 🩷 More engagement sessions here please 🙏🏼
Rachel and Patrick’s engagement session took us through some of my favorite spots in Des Moines. We started at the Des Moines Art Center, focusing on the original 1945 wing designed by Eliel Saarinen. The mix of Art Nouveau and Art Deco architecture gave us plenty of clean lines and textures to work with as we wandered around, just taking it all in.
From there, we walked over to the Clare & Miles Mills Rose Garden, right behind the Art Center. This garden has been around since the 1930s, and it’s just a really beautiful place to be. Everything smelled amazing, the colors were soft and rich, and it was nice to just exist in a space full of flowers.
To end the night, we headed downtown to the Des Moines Building for a rooftop session. Built in 1930, this 14-story Art Deco/Art Moderne skyscraper has a 360-degree view of downtown Des Moines. By the time we got up there, it was blue hour, overcast, and windy. The flash against the grey sky made the whole set feel sharp and cool. Before heading up, we stopped inside the building’s lobby and elevator bay, where the warm lighting and rich details made the perfect backdrop to highlight Rachel’s engagement ring, a family heirloom.
This session moved from architectural to colorful to bold, and I loved getting to shoot so many different spaces with these two.