Growing up I always had a fascination with weddings, but especially proposals. I loved watching shows on TLC where they planned the big moment where they “popped the question.” So when Will contacted me to capture his proposal to his girlfriend Stormie, I was SO excited. I was even MORE excited when he told me about his big plan to propose in front of a hot air balloon. What I didn’t realize is that the balloon isn’t just chilling out, fully inflated, waiting for the passengers to hop in and go on a fun ride. There’s a lot of work involved to get the balloon inflated!
We met in Waxahachie and the hot air balloon company pulled up with a van that had the basket hitched to the back (the basket was WAY smaller than I imagined). Then they pull a bag out of the van about the size of a bean bag chair. In this bag was the fabric for the balloon. The people start pulling out the fabric and they keep going and going and going and going… obviously my concept of the size of hot air balloons was completely off. After they lay it all out flat they grab this gigantic fan and start trying to inflate it. This process takes about 20-30mins before it’s inflated enough to turn on the burner. Once the fire was involved things moved rather quickly.
The plan was for him to ask her right as the balloon was fully inflated, we would take some pictures of them together and then they would hop in and go for a ride. However, once the balloon was ready to go, the people running the show start shouting for everyone to get in because it’s literally starting to float away. Did I mention that the fan and burner thing are ridiculously loud? So it all went a little bit faster than expected, but in the end the experience was perfectly fitting for their engagement story and we all had a blast.
