Nina S Cafe St Paul Mn Engagement Photos

Ben wanted to go forward in the engagement toward Sam and made his surprise proposal in the Cities. Their photo session took place in a place loved by families and college students: The Nina Coffee. This is the last chapter of this long afternoon. The first location was Como Park, and then a private library.

Cozy Coffee

Nina’s cafe is one of those places where food is very good, and each ingredient is probably organic or from a fancy brand. One of the walls is covered with library wallpaper, while the other one is covered by a wallpaper featuring an antic typewriter and some black and white picture.
The other walls are covered by black and white photographs and paintings (I won’t say a piece of art, though).
There are all kinds of tables, from the big thick piece of wood to the tiny round table (similar to the ones in Paris), to the oval shape table made of white marble and, not to forget, the table to play chess or the self-service books that you can borrow. Most of people are sitting alone, working on their computer or using their phone (mostly from the brand with an apple), some read books, and some discuss.
So, can we say that it’s a hipster coffee shop? I am not sure. I would say that it’s a bar for people who love to make good coffee and appreciate a good place.

Anyways, on this rainy day of April, the coffee shop was crowded, and it was not possible to take some good pictures inside the coffee shop, but that didn’t really matter given the coffee shop itself was not being attracted Sam & Ben.
So, we stayed in the adjacent hallway.

Blair Arcade: A special building that charged with memory

So, the real reason they asked their photographer to cross Minneapolis and the Twin Cities neighborhood to shoot their engagement session was not really the coffee shop itself. Actually, Sam and Ben love F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of Gatsby the Magnificent), and thus they like the ’20s and the prohibition period. This is the reason why they chose this location.

Indeed, Nina’s coffee, is located on the historic Cathedral Hill, at the intersection of Selby Avenue and Wester Ave North of Saint Paul. The building shares the same architecture as the one across the street, hosting the famous W. A. Frost Restaurant. The edifice was built in 1889 and made of sandstone and brick. The Richardson Romanesque style, features arched windows and arched doorways. It was a famous place one century ago, precisely during the prohibition time.

In consequence, the architecture, the glass doors, the mirrors, the tiles, remind us of this universe. A good idea would have been to a picture of the exterior of the building; It was rainy. This is why we shoot these pictures in this corridor.

Let’s Theater Play Begin

Posing in front of the camera is never easy. Especially when you are on a 10-meter long corridor (30 feet) with a flash and a photographer standing in front of you, and asking you to walk one foot in front of another. That said, Sam and Ben did very well.

Accessories

This kind of more stage image is possible only when the bride and groom feel confident with their photographer. Ben, with his suit and his hat that reminds us of the prohibition time, enjoyed pretending to be one of that gangster business man. He was acting with his wife and forgot, during a short period of time, the presence of the camera.

Is the Marriage Tradition a Theater Play

I some time wonder if all the wedding thing is not a theater play. Indeed, if you go back to the origin, it was a symbolic moment when not only a father was giving his daughter to another man, but when the daughter became a woman.

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A variety of complementary locations to Nina’s Caffe