Mazatlán

Therese and I were sitting in our hotel room at Riu Resort in Mazatlán, Mexico.

I was having a few (dozen) Dos Equis and she had her hair in a big brown towel having just got out of the shower. The TV was on and it was not long after the sun had gone down. On the TV was a Pierce Morgan interview with Heidi Klum. Goddamn that guy can talk, and goddamn she’s stunning.

The interview was moving along and touched on the topic of weddings, and more specifically, how Seal proposed to Frau Klum.

She went on to explain the ridiculousness of how it all unfolded. The proposal was done in Whistler, British Columbia on the top of a mountain. Seal, very modestly, had an ice sculpture created on top of the mountain that resembled a house (igloo?) to which they flew up to on his private helicopter. Once they arrived at the top, the helicopter dropped the two off so they were in total isolation on top of a mountain.

He pulled out his guitar and the two sat on a rug made out of some wild animal (a bear, if I remember correctly).

He sang her a song and proposed.

Therese, with her brown towel on her wet hair, and I looked at one another at that point. We didn’t really say much, only laughed.

“I guess I should have made an igloo for you?”

“No, how you did it was perfect. It was us”, she said.

About a week before we were sitting there in that hotel room, we were in Vancouver and we got engaged. There was no song and dance, no helicopters, no bear rugs, and no theatrics worthy of a Pierce Morgan interview. As Therese said, it was us.

This trip we were on was our first vacation together. For years we had bounced between Sweden and Canada and travelled all over both of those places extensivelly, but in terms of a real trip, this was our maiden voyage.

No Nordica, no laptops, no “Jakobs”, no work.

Absent of all those things, I was pleasantly surprised how much reflection can happen when your surrounded by 12 empty plastic beer cups on a beach chair in +30° C. After the year Jakob and I had experienced, reflection time – which I think is key when moving forward – was impossible with all the stuff we had going on. So the morning after that Pierce Morgan evening, reflect I did.

I thought about my previous trips to resorts like the one we were at when I was a sweaty photographer running around looking like I was 10 minutes late for everything.

And the mountain of weddings and various sessions Jakob had done throughout the year. 40’ish weddings. 150’ish engagement sessions. 200’ish portrait sessions. Multiple weddings in Iceland, Sweden, and Mexico.

And how 2012 is shaping up. Next year will be a gong show without question. I’ll be going to Iceland next summer for a wedding, our bookings in dollar figures right now surpass what we made in all of 2011, and we’re definitely going to be travelling together to a lot of continents.

But the hub of all things remotely fortunate in my life is Therese.

So there we were laying in the Mazatlán sun, and I looked over at her. Her red nose was sweaty as hell – she always sweats there first – and I thought about how lucky I was. Engaged, planning a wedding in Sweden, and sitting in Mexico with my fiancé.

Not bad.

/Cole

(For all of you photo enthusiasts, these were shot with the Fuji X100.)

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