Tennessee Capitol || Bicentennial Mall Park || Taylor & Brant Engagement

Tennessee Capitol Engagement Session in Nashville, TN

I drove from Knoxville to Nashville to shoot Taylor and Brant’s engagement session. I arrived WAY too early because you never know about Nashville traffic. Since I was meeting them at Bicentennial Mall Park and having to cut right through downtown Nashville, it was definitely not worth the risk of being late. So, I got there ONE HOUR early haha. It was one of those things where if I had left 15 minutes later I would have probably hit a whole hour worth of traffic and been late. As it was, however, I was super early, and I had time to really drive around and figure out exactly where I wanted to take them. As I mapped out our plan around Bicentennial Park, I did a quick Google search to see how other photographers had used Bicentennial. It’s a pretty big space, and this particular day they were setting up for a music festival in most of the park so I was really limited on where I could drive. My hope in the Google search was it may tell me what was in the areas I couldn’t drive to know if it would be worth walking the couple all the way through it. But what I came across instead of Bicentennial spots was the War Memorial right beside the Tennessee Capitol Building. My jaw literally dropped. It had a European look to it, and after I saw what Taylor and Brant were wearing, I decided it was totally worth presenting the War Memorial option to them. The downfall was that we were either going to have to fight traffic to drive up there only to pay $50 for 20 minutes of parking. Or to stay parked in the free parking at Bicentennial and walk ONE BILLION stairs up the front of capitol hill.

As you probably guessed, they decided it was worth it. Instead of risking the drive and having to pay to park, we started the hike. Thankfully, it wasn’t too brutally hot outside, and we did stop a couple times on our way up for different photo ops. But after we climbed the ONE BILLION stairs, climbed the rest of the hill, walked a block down past the capitol, we rounded the corner to find fencing and scaffolding completely covering the War Memorial. I mean from top to bottom. Locks on the fencing so we couldn’t even try to get into the courtyard area to use the few parts of it that didn’t have scaffolding on it. My heart dropped. Did I just bring them all the way up here for nothing?? Did I seriously just do this to this precious couple??? Literally, my brain raced a million miles a minute of what to do, what to say to make this okay. Then, I turned around and saw the Tennessee Capitol building, perfectly backlit by the beautiful sunlight and said, “Guys, it was still worth it. We’re going to use the Capitol!” Our time at the Tennesse Capitol building has created some of my all time favorite engagement photos. I’m totally and completely obsessed. It’s so clean and crisp and beautiful, the weather was so good, and the couple was so perfect. I will be drooling over these for YEARS to come!

I’m a Knoxville Wedding Photographer that loves to travel. I shoot anywhere! Click here to contact me with any questions you have about pricing or booking! If you liked what you saw above, go ahead and follow me on Facebook or Instagram to see my daily updates of the latest sessions!

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