Today’s featured engaged couple on Dallas Wedding Planner is Whitney and Erik. They were engaged on Christmas Eve 2008 and will be getting married on April 24, 2010. Both the wedding and the reception will take place at the Hilton Bella Harbor in Rockwall. Enjoy their Q & A interview and the beautiful engagement photo session taken by Perez Photography.

How did the two of you meet? Erik and I met while we were both attending Western Michigan University. We happened to live in the same townhouse complex, just a few doors down from each other, for over a year and we had never met! The summer after my sophomore year and his junior year, we were introduced to each other when our roommates began dating, and we have been together ever since!

Where is home for the two of you? We are both originally from Michigan, but moved down to Dallas about two years ago when Erik received a job offer with a company in the area. We both miss our families and friends back in Michigan, but love living in Dallas!

Tell us about your proposal. Erik and I had planned to go see our families a few days after Christmas, so we spent Christmas Eve by ourselves at our apartment. Erik’s family’s tradition is to open presents on Christmas Eve, and my family typically opens our presents on Christmas Day, so we compromised and decided to open two presents each on Christmas Eve. The second present that I opened was a DVD that Erik had made for me. The DVD was a slide show of pictures of Erik and I, starting when we first began dating and leading up to our engagement, which was set to the music of 3 of our favorite songs. At the end of the video, a picture of the ring box faded in to a picture of the ring and Erik got down on one knee. It was so perfect! :)

Who did you first tell you were engaged? We both tried to call our families as soon as it happened, but no one was answering their phones because everyone was at Christmas Eve mass! We finally got a hold of Erik’s sister, and the rest of our families called us back soon thereafter so we could share the good news.

What quality do you like or admire most about each other?
Whitney: I really admire Erik’s patience. He is always so calm and laid back, which really helps to balance out all of my worries while planning the wedding!
Erik: I’m not sure what quality to attribute this to, but I always admired the fact that Whitney was able to work 3 jobs while finishing up her bachelor’s degree, online classes, and still found time to spend with me!

Where is your favorite place to go or your favorite thing to do with each other? We really love to try different restaurants around the Dallas area. Our favorite right now is probably La Duni because they have great mojitos!

Where did you go for your photo session? We started the photo session at the Mandalay Canal in Las Colinas, but ended up in a field near the canal that had this really unique stone structure in the middle of it. Erik took a wrong turn on the way to our second location (a park) and Cesar just happened to see it while he was driving around and trying to find us! After we took a few pictures in the structure and turned to try a different angle, Erik and I realized that the whole structure was full of bee hives! It was worth it though because we got some really awesome pictures out of it!

Which picture is your absolute favorite from the engagement photo shoot, and why? My absolute favorite picture is one of us in the field. In the background you can see the stone structure, the trees, and the tall grass. The scenery and the colors of the trees remind me of fall in Michigan, which is my favorite time of year back home! Erik’s favorite picture is of the two of us facing each other in the stone structure, where we are almost silhouettes with the sun shining in between us. Cesar did a great job capturing the light in the photo, and it turned out amazing!

What is one thing that you have enjoyed most about planning your wedding since you got engaged? The cake tasting! :)

What colors are you using for your wedding? I have always been a huge fan of black and white (Erik used to say that I never wore any color!) so those were two obvious choices for me when I first started planning. I also decided to add some light pink accents in with the flowers for a little bit of color.

What are your three favorite wedding blogs and or website? My three favorite blogs/websites are: The Knot, the Dallas Wedding Planner Blog, and the Weddingbee. They have all been a great source of inspiration throughout the planning process!

Whitney and Erik, you two make an adorable couple. We enjoyed getting to hear your engagement love story. Thanks for sharing with us.  A huge thank you to Perez Photography for sharing some of your fun engagement photo images with us.