Couple Kills It With 'Friday the 13th' Engagement Photos

Like most brides-to-be, Vanessa Lawson had very specific ideas about how her engagement photos with fiancé Josh Morden should look. She wanted them taken in the woods, among the beautiful turning leaves of autumn. And there had to be lots of blood, obviously. "We knew exactly how we wanted to die," Lawson tells Yahoo Shine. "We definitely wanted the shot of the killer standing in the woods staring at us as we held hands."

That's right, everyone! Welcome to the modern age of engagement photos: just a beautiful bride-to-be, her besotted groom, and a machete-wielding, bloodthirsty homicidal maniac.

 "You could say we have a flair for the dramatic. We have an insane collection of horror films at home — I guess it's a bond that we share," she says. Inspired by the recent trend of zombie-themed engagement pics (seriously, Google "zombie engagements" — the results will blow your mind), Lawson, 24, and Morden, 25, decided to put their own spin on the engagement-photo tradition by re-creating scenes similar to those in the fabled horror franchise "Friday the 13th" in a wooded area outside of their hometown of Toronto.

High-school sweethearts who've been together for eight years, the couple, who both work as office managers at production companies, tapped photographer Brandon Gray to make their bloody romantic vision come to life. The photos quickly made them an Internet sensation, both for Lawson and Morden's gung-ho commitment (spoiler alert: Some shots could be called gruesome, and the homicidal maniac comes out on top) and for their refreshingly unpretentious attitude.

That the photos came out just before Halloween is purely coincidence. "Honestly, we didn't plan it that way. We got engaged back in December 2012 and haven't really done anything in the way of plans since then. So we staged these and put them on Facebook to let everyone know we're setting things in motion."

The ceremony is scheduled for next September. Should guests expect any madmen with chainsaws running down the aisle? "No," says the bride firmly. " It's going to be very traditional." — Charlotte Rudge, Shine Staff