You ARE defined by your engagement shoot. Do it again. But like this.

BY ANNIE MOLENAAR

Sometimes I look at a couple’s engagement photos and think, ‘Yep, that looks cool.’ I mean, who doesn’t love looking at a tree and laughing for no apparent reason? Or joining your fingers together with your partner to make a love heart shape… or standing in a field nose-to-nose as the sun sets behind you… srsly… WHO?

**insert vomit emoji**

I know, I know, the banality of such contrived shoots continues to baffle me too.

And just when I think my mouth couldn’t possibly fill with more vomit at the mere suggestion of such a shoot, something glorious comes along.

Meet Talita and Rafael.

A psychologist and a drummer/engineer from the northeast of Brazil. They met at a rock concert in Rio de Janeiro and fell in like with each other real quick. Both Capricorns, both heavily into rock/metal music, and both totally uncompromising on their personal goth styling and aesthetic. Basically, a match made in hell, which to them, is romantic af.

They have been together for seven years and in March next year, they are planning a wedding that will turn the Brazilian wedding market on it’s head. To give everyone just a small taste of what to expect from their wedding, they decided to do an engagement shoot.

When I asked them why they decided on doing this shoot and what they wanted to achieve from it, they said that they wanted to have something special to remember this period in their lives, something that showed them for exactly who they are, something that made a statement about their individuality and style, and something that demonstrated their own unique way of thinking about marriage. Finally, they decided that it’s pretty fucking rockstar to have a shoot of their own like this.

And we think they’re right.

So blown away were we by these legitimate #engagementinspo shots that we had to find out more about their actual wedding plans. I asked Talita and Raf to tell me what surprises they had in store for their guests and here’s what they said:

“We planned a beautiful goth party only for the very special people in our lives. The colour palette is all black, deep red and grey. We will both be wearing all black and will have A LOT of skulls in the decoration. Also, we plan to have a candle ceremony, so we will have candles, dry twigs and red roses in the decor too. The band was very carefully chosen and we will have a moment where any guest could play with the band and the groom will be on the drums (we have a lot of musicians friends and even more terrible singers friends). We also plan to have a table with free temporary tattoos so all our guest could have a lot of fun.”

Yessss… temporary tattoos! A favor/bomboniere idea I can get behind.

“We expect that all is with our look, our singular way to just be. It’s not very common, especially in Brasil, to have dark/goth/halloween weddings and it’s very important to us that all is looking like a Dracula’s castle. But even more important is to be able to feel that all the people we care about are there to bless us with good thoughts and have a lot of fun with music and rock and roll.”

I reckon they have the right idea about this whole wedding business.

Congratulations, Talita and Rafael, on your engagement. We wish you the darkest, dreamiest, most most rock ‘n roll wedding ever.

We can not wait to see it unfold.

All images by Pedro Martins from Fotografia Noturna