Chelsie and Will Morales have been married for three years, and during that time have had a lot of photos to document it.
"She's big into pictures, I am not going to lie to you,” Will said. “Every once in a while, we do them."
But never before has one picture represented such a story for this couple.
Earlier this summer, Chelsie learned she was pregnant with their first child. Rather than immediately tell the hubby, she orchestrated a plan. Emailing a high school friend, photographer Karen Quinn, in the meantime.
"I just felt so honored she would ask me to keep such a secret."
The idea: Tell Will, and catch it on camera the very moment he learns he's a dad.
But first, the pretense.
"She said we won an Instagram photo shoot," Will said.
"We were going to take some pictures and have some games she had for couples,” Will said. “I'm going to put you back-to-back and hand you these chalkboards. And I'm going to have you write three words to describe each other on them."
"I put ‘beautiful,’ ‘witty,’ and ‘smart.’ And I thought that was going to be awesome, because when she saw she was like ‘Awww...’ ” he said.
Meanwhile, written on Chelsie's chalkboard: “You're going to be a daddy.”
"So I was just kind of, like, snapping away. His reaction — it was like perfect," Quinn said.
"My jaw dropped,” Will said. “I was saying, ‘Are you serious?’ But I don't know how my mouth could be that open!"
Chelsie is now 14 weeks along, and Will is already thinking about their next family photoshoots with the baby.
But more than anything, this family will have a moment they won't soon forget, captured in a still frame. Forever.
"It was a great memory, and I'll always have that," Will said.
