LOOK: Engaged couple covers themselves in mud to promote farming in their pre-wedding shoot

While couples usually go grand and all out in their engagement shoots, 22-year-old Johncee Gutierrez and Imee Borinaga kept it simple yet meaningful by going au naturel—in, yes, mud.

Their pre-wedding photographs went viral on Facebook, where they can be seen looking loved-up in a rice field owned by the family of Imee. When asked about the photoshoot, the pair revealed they both grew up in a clan of farmers, hence their theme.

“I’ve been longing to feature farming as a job that deserves due credit. I want others to see how difficult it is to get soaked in mud, plant rice straws under the scorching heat of the sun, and get back aches,” Imee, a public school teacher, told PhilSTAR L!FE. “Yet, despite everything, farmers can still live happily without complaining. That served as our inspiration for our pre-nup.”

“Since it’s planting season or in Bisaya, we call it ‘tanom,’ we also wanted others to see how we conceptualized the planting season in a photoshoot,” Johncee, a seafarer, added.

It may have looked quite difficult to pull off as they were covered in mud the entire session, but the couple shared that it was, overall, a light feat. “The only challenge was the fact that I become timid in front of people I’ve just met, but I really love how it turned out to be so natural,” Imee said. “We just acted natural, as seen in our photos, and let our photographer do his thing while we seized the moment,” Johncee recalled.

Johncee’s marriage proposal to Imee was just as straightforward as their pre-wedding snaps. The two, who have been together for 14 months, got engaged in October 2019. “He just blurted out on our anniversary that he would love to marry me and I just said yes. I thought it was a joke, turned out it was not,” Imee said with a laugh.

“It was both a mutual decision between us. No extraordinary engagement session, just pure happiness and real emotions,” mused Johncee, adding that they are looking to get hitched this year. “We love to be in each other’s company so bad to the point that I can’t imagine my future without her,” he concluded.

Article thumbnails by Charles Igot