Quad City Area Engagement Photo Shoot Locations

Our lives are all about The To-Do Lists.  I have sticky notes, emails to myself, a bulging day planner, and a crack-berry, and while all these contraptions were designed to make life more organized and thus easier, I find that it makes my head spin eventually. 

On today's to-do list are two things.  The first job is to sand, prime, and paint all the trim in our house.  I am marrying into a very handy family.  My fiance can fix just about anything, and with the help of his mom and dad, they completely flipped the house that we currently live in from a shack o' disgusting shambles to a charming craftsman that we are proud to call home.  I'd like to say that I am handy too, though that would be a lie.  I'm really good at cleaning up after jobs, and if someone gives me a task that doesn't include the possibility of cutting my fingers off, I'm a good sport.  I tend to get bored, however, and sneak away when no one is looking.  Just ten minutes ago, I was cleaning the windows up after my fiance had come by with his sander, when he mentioned that I may want to wait to clean until all the dust had settled.  He started to tell me about other odd jobs that I could do in the meantime, when I pulled a road-runner and PING I was gone.  Now I am hiding in the bedroom typing this blog post.  :)  

The second agenda item on today's to-do list is to figure out where we want our engagement pictures to be taken.  We are kind of late on getting this whole ball rolling as we are getting married in September and have been engaged since August of 2008, but I want our engagement pictures back in time to incorporate into our wedding website and at the actual wedding.  Our photographer is Stephen from Giraffe Photography who is amazing not only in his craft but also in his creativity.  He's really fun and super flexible, and I know that our wedding and engagement photography is going to be off the hook!  

The good thing about having a flexible photographer is that they are totally open to ideas for things to do in pictures and where to take said pictures.  I told Stephen that we are pretty open to locations and whatever, but he and I have already talked about how cliche  pictures make me gag.  (They make Stephen gag, too!)  

The last thing I want is a picture with my hand on my fiance's chest and my head leaning in to him.  Here are just a spackling of the millions of pictures of engaged couples that I found on a Google search:

Do you see what I mean?  Girl's hand on chest to (artfully?) show of the engagement ring, head tilted, awkward smiles fixed.  No thank you.  I blurred out their poor, unfortunate heads as I mean no disrespect to the gazillions of people who have this shot in their wedding photography repertoire.  It's just that there are so many other options out there!  I rest my case. 

The REAL purpose of today's post is not to bash (classic?) photography, but rather to start a list of cool places that all of us engaged people can go to have our pictures taken.  I'm going to start the list, but if anyone wants to chime in on the message board, I'll add your ideas here and give you smarty-farties credit!

Quad City Places (in no particular order):

• The Botanical Center
• The Figge Museum
• Vandaveer Rose Gardens, Ponds, Greenhouse
• The Putnam
• Niabi Zoo
• Brady Street Stadium
• on the Riverfront
• Benbutterworth Parkway
• Lagomarcino's
• The Grand Stand
• Modern Woodmen Park
• on one of the bridges
• at one of the golf courses
• at one of our locally owned restaurants
• at the Mississippi Valley Fair
• at the Air Show
• on the John Deere Commons
• in a downtown abandoned building or old hotel (if you can sneak in)
• at Scott County Park
• at the iWireless Center
• at one of our casinos 
• at the Quad City Downs
• on one of our riverboats
• on the Wapsi River
• John Deere Headquarters - submitted by hz80408 
• District of Rock Island - submitted by srtrist