The story behind our amazing engagement photos (and why it’s good to talk to strangers)

Posted By Hup | February 12, 2009

So it all started at IKEA (we love IKEA)…no seriously, it really did start there. About a month or so ago Stephanie and I headed down the street to IKEA so that I could finally buy myself a desk and chair to work on. The couch just wasn’t cutting it anymore and I needed a place to get all of my ‘work away from work’ stuff done. That makes sense, right? It certainly makes sense to me.

OK, back to the story.

So, as Stephanie and I were goofing around on our way out of the last section of maze-like aisles, boxes of products, kids and couples that are always a staple at IKEA, a guy walked up and quickly asked us, ‘Hey, are you two getting married?’. He was an Asian-looking guy with lots of energy and some pretty wild spiked hair that was tamed only by the sunglasses that he had on the top of his head. He caught us both a little bit off guard as we both looked at each other and proceeded to mumble, ‘Well, yeah…actually we are.’ We asked him why he was asking and if he happened to overhear us talking about wedding plans, which he quickly dismissed by saying that we were simply a beautiful couple and he thought that we looked like we should be getting married sometime soon. We took this as a compliment and a really damn good guess and continued to ask him what he was doing randomly talking to complete strangers at IKEA — not that I thought there was anything wrong with that.

We soon found out that his name was Henry Sun and that he’s a guy who has a love for photography and would like to find ways to pursue it full time. This is why he was sneaking around IKEA looking for potential couples who could help him boost his portfolio. After hearing his explanation I have to admit that Henry sounded anything but legit, but with our incredibly optimistic outlooks Stephanie and I quickly decided to swap contact info with him in hopes that one day he might actually take some amazing engagement photos of us.

Well, nearly a month later Henry has invited us over for dinner twice (he’s an AMAZING cook), we have gone to a concert in SF together and last Saturday he took us out on a day-long engagement photo shoot adventure that was one of the most fun days Stephanie and I have ever had in California. In just a month Henry’s gone from being a random stranger with a question at IKEA to a really close and trusted friend. I guess you could say that being optimistic isn’t all that bad after all, eh?


We learned all about Henry the past month. This is him and his daughter, Caeshia.

Like I said, this past Saturday we finally headed out or an engagement photo shoot extravaganza, which resulted in Henry taking nearly 2,500 photos of me and Stephanie all around San Francisco and at Half Moon Bay. Some of the photos are so amazing I really don’t even know how to describe them. As we looked at them the next day I swear that sometimes I would look at the photos and have a hard time believing that it was really us that I was staring at. I guess that means he did a great job, right?

As Henry continues to process the 2,000+ photos, he finished up a couple of them so that we could add them to this blog and to Facebook as a teaser to what else is on the way. The two photos below are the ones that he gave us — I hope this gives you a taste of what the rest of them are like. Like I said, A-MA-ZING.


This was taken in front of a random graffiti wall in a not-so-great section of San Francisco. The people were actually really cool and a couple of them actually thanked me for choosing their neighborhood to shoot our photos in, which I thought was pretty cool.


This was taken at Half Moon Bay beach, which was absolutely freezing. It was the last shoot of the day and we got there right before the sun went down, which made for some really beautiful (and hot) photos. As you’d probably guess, Stephanie’s dad loves this one.

If you want to learn more about Henry’s amazing photo skillz, be sure to check out his website: {h}creatives — tell him Hup and Steph sent ya’. :)

Filed Under great friends, new/random experience, palo alto

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    7 Talkies! to “The story behind our amazing engagement photos (and why it’s good to talk to strangers)”

    1. Zoe on February 12th, 2009 1:12 pm

      Love the Photos they are fantastic! You two look so good together…cant wait to see the rest

    2. swell on February 12th, 2009 2:29 pm

      of course you two are going to have amazing photos, you’re freakin’ fabulous together!

      but, he did do a great job. and props to him for getting your business (and friendship) in such a crazy way!

    3. redg on February 12th, 2009 2:33 pm

      Dude…I bet you still have sand in your crack

    4. Kimiko on February 13th, 2009 3:56 pm

      Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.

    5. Hup and Steph’s 50 Goals For 2009 : Hup and Steph on February 16th, 2009 11:17 pm

      [...] UPDATE: We got to check out a lot of SF while we were getting our engagement pics taken — what an awesome day. [...]

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    7. magen on March 5th, 2009 1:20 pm

      I need to go to IKEA much more often. What a hilarious sequence of events! Love it, you guys are so amazing!

    What do you want to tell us, hmmm?