Biltmore House Engagement — Adam Chapin Photography

The Biltmore is THE marker for Asheville, so getting to share Elaine and Kristin’s first time to town AND getting to photograph their Biltmore House engagement session for them was even more fun. A decade ago, I couldn’t even imagine this.

Just before my first visit to Asheville in 2013, I asked some folks who had spent time up here where to go and where not to go. I heard the usual things about restaurants and breweries, a few spots to hike, and a couple off the beaten path options as well. I always asked about the Biltmore House, and shockingly most, if not all, of the people I asked said “don’t waste your time or money”, or “it’s kind of boring…just some big house”, and “my wife wanted to go so we did, it was fine but I wouldn’t go on my own.” Not really the marketing the Biltmore House is looking for, but I went anyway. Even paid for the extra tour, at the time it was called the Architect’s Tour and I have to say it’s pretty fucking cool (and I still go at least once every year on my own).

But what does all of this have to do with Elaine and Kristin? I guess I need to back up a bit.

Elaine reached out to me in October of 2022. She had planned to propose to Kristin on New Year’s Eve and wanted to do it up here in Asheville. It was sort of a surprise and sort of not. They had been holding off waiting for one of the families to give their blessing, but unfortunately, with no promise of that in sight, they took it upon themselves to make it official anyway.

We talked about some options. I shared that the weather around New Year’s could be good, or good be bad and we likely wouldn’t know until a couple of days before. We had a very loose plan in place. Then we connected over Christmas while they were visiting family in Texas and that was when the weather wheels came off. Ice and storms and Southwest Airlines issues locked them down in Texas and they were going to have to rent a car and drive back to North Carolina and a stopover in Asheville just wasn’t on the schedule. So we had to postpone.

A couple of days after New Year’s Elaine shared with me that she had gone ahead and proposed to Kristin. She said yes, in case you felt I was leaving you in the shadows about that. So our session was going to be a little simpler as we didn’t need to plan around a surprise. But we did have to work with work and travel schedules and find a time when the two of them could make it up to AVL.

We found a time in February that worked for everyone, and the all-mighty question of where are we going to do this came back up. We had talked about an early morning hike out somewhere on the Blue Ridge, but the weekend we had planned was called for cold and wet and the Blue Ridge Parkway shuts down at the mere mention of cold and wet. I shared that I had some spots around town and it would be more of a tour than a hike. And then a couple of days before I thought, a cold and wet weekend would mean the Biltmore would be less than full and maybe even perfectly quiet. I posed the suggestion to Elaine and Kristin and they were in, a Biltmore House engagement session was on the books!

Like all couples, I was warned, rewarned, and then for good measure warned a few more times just how awkward they would be in front of the camera. And like all couples, I assured them that they would be fine. Being in front of the camera is immensely awkward for most of us, and most of what we think of as awkward is actually endearing. So we took our awkward and endearing asses out to Biltmore after doping up on some caffeine and hot libations from Starbucks.

The morning was just as I had hoped for and expected. It was cold and rainy and we were the first of four cars in the parking lot. We had only gotten garden passes and I knew most people would be queueing up for the house and we would have the gardens entirely ourselves - and we did. It was awesome! We shared some idiosyncrasies, I cracked a lot of self-deprecating jokes, got myself involved in a minor and comical debate about passive aggressiveness, they danced to what will be their wedding song in one of the greenhouses (where we out awkwarded an older tourist couple), we played in the bamboo and wrapped it up in front of a waterfall. All on the grounds of the Biltmore.

I could sum it up all sorts of ways, but Elaine captured it best here: “We still hate being in front of the camera but Adam made it fun: we laughed and we cried. The pictures were better than anything we could have hoped for - his style and vision led us into a bamboo forest and slow dancing in a greenhouse. I think every ten minutes he would just smirk and say "this might be weird but let's try this."

Almost always going to the Biltmore House by myself is really great, but getting to share it in this way and with a couple who has never even been to Asheville - it just felt a little more special and I think that comes through in their photos.