Week VIII - Dodged and BURNED!

Before - A recent shot of my boyfriend and I at a family wedding. (He has a tendency not to smile, though he truly can). Anyways, I am bothered how the image has the subject matter in the shadows. The camera took in the light from the background and hence is more washed out.

After - So first I cropped the image slightly, to remove some of the unnecessary background "stuff". I then dodged the subject matter, of the two peoplle, and burned the background. I found that when I was doing this, it started to wash-out whereever I dodged? Is this common? I am not sure how to alter this once it started. I did alter the Saturation and felt that this helped the aspect of 'washing-out" that was occuring. I also found that when burning, it was almost leaving "tracks", as it was obvious to the eye that it was being altered. I had the "hardness" down to 0% and that did make an enormous difference. Another question, I has was the umbrella seems very harsh now. Although this was ultimately my goal, to make the background darker, I found that in doing so, the red seems almost speckled. Is there something else I should do to alter this? Did I burn incorrectly? Overall, I feel the alterations where affective, but I definitely need to practice more.