Bluffton photographer takes cutest photo ever of Beaufort County’s own Romeo and Juliet

Since I last wrote about the biggest coincidence to happen in Beaufort County (not the biggest? send me proof), newborns Romeo Hernandez and Juliet Umana have once again gone viral with their cuteness.

The story started a week ago when Cassie Clayshulte, the official newborn photographer at Coastal Carolina Hospital in Hardeeville, took a side-by-side photo of two unrelated babies, born nearly a day apart, whose parents had never met but somehow had named their babies to perfectly match each other.

After she posted the photo on her Facebook page, it was shared thousands of times over and caught the attention of the national media and morning TV shows, including “Good Morning America” and “Today,” as well as the international media (think “newspapers that write a lot about Prince Harry and anyone having a bad day in a bathing suit”).

After Morgan Hernandez and her husband, Jovanny, of Beaufort, and Christiana Shifflett and her husband, Allan Umana, of Bluffton, brought each member of this Shakespearean duo to their respective homes, they continued to receive requests for interviews.

For one of those TV interviews, the moms drove to Clayshulte’s studio in Bluffton, where they found themselves with a little bit of time afterward.

Both babies were fed and content.

“I had been wanting to reach out to them to see if they wanted to do a quick photo session together,” Clayshulte said Tuesday morning. But her phone and Facebook inbox had been blowing up all week and she still had clients to take care of on top of everything else.

So now was as good a time as any.

The moms helped her pick out the babies’ looks. But Clayshulte already had some ideas about the shoot. Her goals: An Old World look but not cheesy. Something that would capture the story without re-creating any particular scene from the play.

She succeeded.

The photos that came out of that impromptu shoot show a sleeping Romeo and Juliet curled up together on white roses, next to a leather-bound book, both crowned and cozy and very much happy and not at all having just poisoned each other a la the play and a la the many morbid jokes people have been making online because these are babies, people.

“The (play) isn’t a great story because of how it ended,” Clayshulte said about the comments. “It was because of the love (Romeo and Juliet) had for each other.”

As soon as the photos were posted, the couple that doesn’t know they are one yet went viral again.

The two, in this new picture, have appeared on too many sites for me to name, but here are some: Huffington Post, ABC News, Newsday and Scary Mommy. They were on the “Today” show Sunday and Tuesday. On “Good Morning America” again, on “Fox and Friends.” They were shared thousands of times online.

Why? Because “Romeo and Juliet” is such a great play that we all love?

Maybe. But more likely because it’s just over-the-top adorable.

It makes people smile.

And it makes us remember that the internet isn’t always a cesspool of misspelled insults from the bored and lonely and likely not showered. Although, like I said, the trolls are still out there and weighing in on the real-life Romeo and Juliet, because why just let that creepy inside voice stay there, I guess.

But the Hernandez and Umana families have had a great sense of humor throughout this whole thing, Clayshulte said, even though it does bother her to see the misinformed comments and cruelty out there.

They think it’s a trip that their newborns’ photos have traveled so far and wide. They like that it brings others joy.

“They’re having fun,” Clayshulte said. “They’re thinking ‘How funny and cute and what a neat coincidence!’ ”

But she almost didn’t post these latest photos because of the comments they might get.

The moms told her it would be OK, though.

“ ‘We don’t care,’ ” they said. “ ‘We like (the photos). We don’t care if some stupid internet trolls don’t like it.’ ”

Clayshulte is, understandably, protective of the families. After all, it was her photos that brought this upon them. But more than that, she seems to have grown fond of them on a personal level in the short time they’ve known each other.

As have the families themselves.

“The moms have become friends,” Clayshulte said. “The dads, too.”

“I think that’s the real romance here.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2017 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Bluffton photographer takes cutest photo ever of Beaufort County’s own Romeo and Juliet."