Tuxedo Park Engagement | Christian and Mackinley

Boy did we have some crazy circumstances for Mackinley and Christian’s engagement session!

Mackinley and Christian are high school sweethearts and they actually met their freshman year! After they graduated, Christian joined the Air Force and headed to Colorado Springs for school. Mackinley stayed back in Texas where she works as a 2nd grade teacher. They’ve been doing long distance ever since, but they’re planning their wedding back in Texas for 2021 after Christian graduates.

They both love Colorado (they even named their adorable golden retriever Denver), so when Mackinley came to visit for Family weekend in 2020, they scheduled a Rocky Mountain National Park engagement session.

Sadly, their visit fell during the heat of the devastating Colorado wildfires of 2020. Billows of smoke were easily visible in Estes Park and in RMNP. Crazy enough, we still had an afternoon of full sun for our session, which turned out to be beautiful.

We started with a view of the smoke plumes on the Fall River side of the park, then made our way to Tuxedo Park for some open field, sunlit photos. Mackinley wanted to honor their tie to the military, so they brought out the American flag and Christian wore his uniform for the first part of the session.

Then they changed into more formal looks (check out Mackinley’s amazing red dress!), and we explored the stream at Tuxedo Park. We finished our session with a drive up Trail Ridge Road, though the road was closed at Forest Canyon Overlook. We hopped out for a few final photos at the overlook, just after the sun had disappeared behind the mountains.

Congratulations Mackinley and Christian!