The Gardens at SIUE Couples Maternity Session | Abby + Jeff

There’s nothing I love more than to receive an unexpected email from someone I used to dance with in Chicago to do her maternity family photos. I quite literally jumped for joy when I saw Abby’s name in my inbox! The sweetest thing was that she and her husband Jeff wanted to work with someone they trusted for their maternity portraits. I was beyond honored to have been who they thought of for this precious moment in their lives.

What’s funny is that none of us live in the same city that we all met in (Chicago). Abby and Jeff currently reside in Champagne, IL, where Abby is working to achieve her masters degree in dance at the university in town! Now, Champagne is just a couple hours from St. Louis, so the two (three, including Betty their dog, three and a half, including baby) decided to have an adventure day for their photo session! We chose a location that none of us had ever been, The Gardens at SIUE, and were thoroughly impressed by this spot.

It was surprisingly not overly hot for the first day of June, and we were not complaining about it one bit. The Gardens at SIUE provided a stunning backdrop for Abby and Jeff’s couples maternity photos. And let me just say that their pup Betty was quite the ham when it came to being in front of the camera. She is such a sweetie!

Overall, it was a wonderful and loving couples/family-to-be session and I still cannot get enough of all the sweet moments from this shoot! Abby and Jeff (and Betty) were such naturals on camera and their love is so evident in these images. Having danced with Abby years ago in Chicago (under her direction in her company Cattywampus!<—check out her badassery here), it was so much fun to reunite, catch up on all things life, and capture these precious moments of her and Jeff’s life together pre-baby!