AMAZING Marriages – Together We Are One

Life in Love  //  4th March 2013

I sit here with a feeling of melancholy. A feeling like I just want to give up, the big dreams we have are just too big. They stare at me in the face, written in ink in my moleskin journal. Host an AMAZING life escape, launch our AMAZING marriage project, share our message of Love and Service as a live webinar, change the lives of others, stop divorce, show that people can choose happiness, choose love, and have AMAZING lives. The audaciousness of these dreams weighs heavy on my mind.

And there my wife sleeps, calm and peaceful. Breathing in and breathing out. Together we chose this life, a life we own, but why do I feel sad. Shouldn’t I be excited and joyous?

Over the past two months we have done some truly AMAZING things. We went on an AMAZING 10 city cross country tour, we went to Punta Cana and shared our hearts with some of the most amazing souls in the world, and we spoke at our first conference just a few short days ago in Santa Barbara. We have been running at full steam without a moment to slow down. To soak in each other. To focus on what gives us the most strength in our lives, our marriage.

We tell others to go on date nights, but Saturday was the first date night we have had in awhile!

We tell others that big dreams can be accomplished but why are we afraid to live ours?

The thoughts race through my mind. The quietness of the early morning sounds louder than ever. I breath in, and on this day, I choose happiness, I choose love, I choose laughter, I choose to chase those hugely ambition goals.

Without disturbing her sleep, I slip downstairs. Quietly I begin to boil water. Fortunately I had ground some coffee the night before. Having just returned home and having not yet been to the grocery store, I can only find a little oatmeal and a few strawberries. But it is enough. I pour the now hot water over the coffee grinds and watch as the coffee gives fully of itself to the water.

As I climb back up the stairs I am eager for a new day together. She slowly wakes and smiles back at me. In my heart, I know today will be perfect. Today will be AMAZING. Together we are strong. Together, in our marriage, we have the power to achieve things we could not even imagine doing alone. Together we are perfect. Together we are ONE.

If you are thinking that your dreams are too big, if life’s fears are too strong, look to the one you love. Hold each other tight. Breath deeply and say these words. “Together we are perfect. Together we are ONE. No matter how hard life gets, it doesn’t matter because together we will get through it. Together we choose love. Together we choose happiness. Together we will make this life, our marriage, AMAZING!”

Have an AMAZING Monday!!!

Introducing the Liz and Ryan Book Club

Celebrating the Everyday, Friday Favs  //  1st March 2013

Good morning and happy Friday! We hope you all had an AMAZING week and have some fun plans for the weekend! One of our favorite hobbies is reading.  We LOVE reading a good book while snuggling up close under a cozy warm blanket. One of the reasons we love to read is that it inspires creativity in our minds.  For the most part, we end up reading books about business, entrepreneurship, life, etc.  Ok, Ok, we admit it, Liz does have Fifty Shades of Gray downloaded on the iPad too. :)

A few weeks ago, we were chatting with some close friends and were sharing some ideas we learned from reading.   We recommend a few books and and chatted a little while longer about why we loved each one and how it has helped our relationship, lives, or business.  And then we thought, wouldn’t it be fun to create a Liz and Ryan Book Club!! At first the idea sounded stupid, until we started reading Richie Norton‘s new book, “The Power of Starting Something Stupid.”

How many times have you had an idea only to have someone else tell you that it was stupid or wouldn’t work out?  How many times have you thought, if only I could turn this crazy idea into a business and an AMAZING life?  For us this happens all the time!  In fact, starting our business was definitely a stupid idea that we had. More recently, starting our AMAZING Marriage Project was definitely another stupid idea.  But as Richie shares in his book, “stupid is the new smart.”

 

We are so excited and honored to be able to kick off the Liz and Ryan Book Club with The Power of Starting Something Stupid.  For now, we will just be sharing some of our favorite books and some of the advice we’ve learned from reading them, but who knows, eventually our stupid idea could turn into something as big as Oprah’s Book Club! :)

When we met Richie earlier this month in Punta Cana at the What If Conference, immediately we were inspired.  He shared his heart with us and passion for taking what most people often consider stupid ideas and turning them into thriving businesses.  Richie shared a few pieces of advice from his book, but the one that stuck with me the most was this, “Will I Regret it When I am Eighty?” This thought has definitely been our motto over the last year.  In life, there are so many things we put off because we are afraid.  The fears and excuses can be limitless: We don’t have enough time, We don’t have any money, People will say our idea is stupid….

But when we started applying the question “Will I Regret it When I am Eighty” to our lives, those fears and excuses suddenly don’t make a lot of sense anymore.  Why wouldn’t we start doing more of what we love and less of what we don’t?  Richie calls this The Bezos Test. In The Power of Starting Something Stupid, Richie shares the story of Jeff Bezos.  Jeff’s story is often a familiar one that many of us have. It goes a little something like this:

“Jeff had a secure, well-paying job, a job that made him happy.  By a societal measure, the guy had it all. Everything, including a wickedly stupid idea.”

Jeff’s stupid idea turned out to become Amazon.com.  When he took his stupid idea to his boss at the time, he was told that the idea would be good thing to start for someone that didn’t already have a job, not someone like him.  Instead of listening to the advice of his manager, Jeff asked himself, will I regret not pursuing this dream when I am eighty?  The answer was yes. So he quit his job, took out a loan from his parents and begin working on his idea that would eventually revolutionize e-commerce and how things are sold on the internet.  Can you imagine the internet without Amazon.com?

The next time you have a stupid idea, take the Bezos Test and ask yourself, “Will I regret it when I am eighty?”

This is just one of the many AMAZING pieces of advice that Richie shares in The Power of Starting Something Stupid.

From the moment we picked it up, we were inspired.  The book pushes us to “Crush Fear” and make all of our big dreams a reality. Instead of looking at our ideas as stupid, more often then not, our ideas are actually smart ideas.

Another one of my favorite sections in the book is what Richie calls START, the five actions of the new smart.  START stands for Serve, Thank, Ask, Receive, Trust.  By applying these actions in our lives, jobs, businesses, and ideas, “we create an unyielding foundation for future success.”  How awesome is that?

We are so excited to share Richie’s Book with you all.  It is released March 5th, but don’t wait, head on over to Amazon.com to preorder your copy right now!

So here is the next part of our stupid idea, we want to know who is interested in being part of our Liz and Ryan Book Club?  Have ideas of books we should read? Or have thoughts about how we could make the Book Club more AMAZING? Interested in participating in a live chat to discuss the books in our book club further?  We’d love to hear from you, leave a comment below.  And because we love hearing from you all so much, we will be giving away a copy of Richie’s book to one lucky person that leaves us a message!

 

You are so much more than a photographer | Showit United 2013

Gratitude  //  27th February 2013

Prior to Monday, I would have told you that I was nervous about speaking at Showit United 2013. My introverted self makes it a little challenging (ok, I lot challenging!) to be at the front of the room sharing a presentation. But, then David Jay said something in his opening session that pretty much rocked our worlds. He said something like this:

Anyone who is feeling nervous about speaking is coming at it from the totally wrong place. They are making it way too much about themselves and not recognizing that it is so much bigger than that!

Whoa! Yes, it stung just a bit. But it stung in the best possible way! It was the perfect reminder of what this opportunity was all about. We were blessed with the opportunity to share our heart and soul with a room full of talented people! It was NOT about us, it was about what we could share with everyone else!

After attending an afternoon panel on Monday at Showit United on a topic very similar to what we were sharing yesterday, Service, I found myself getting more fired up than ever. I still had those feelings that I once considered nerves, but I realized that it was so much more than that! I was fired up to have an opportunity to share our gifts in hopes that we could make a difference in the lives of others!! We were fired up!

Yesterday, we poured our hearts out to a room of new and old friends at the Showit United Conference about making your life about Love and Service. We shared a lot with every one in that room. And they turned around and shared so much more! They opened their hearts and encouraged us more than we could have ever imagined! We are so grateful.

The title of our session was “You are SO MUCH More Than a Photographer.” It is in our hearts to share a message of encouragement to always be in search of recognizing your gifts. We firmly believe that by combining your gifts with your passions, you have the power to change the world! Even though you may call yourself by a title of photographer or teacher or construction worker (whatever your “profession” may be)… YOU have so much more to share with the world than what you are limited to with that title! You have passions and you have gifts that are UNIQUE to you. You were given those gifts for a reason and it is your responsibility to utilize them to serve others! That’s what we believe anyway! ;)

We are definitely planning to share more from our session yesterday… including a very special webinar in the near future that shares the whole thing! ;). But, for now, we will share this Compendium video that we concluded the session with yesterday! It is the perfect reminder that YOU have so much to give! And you should probably go and do it! ;)

To everyone who was in that room yesterday… thank you for listening to our hearts and opening yours to support us in our dreams! We are so grateful for each of you and we can’t wait to see what you do with your passions and your gifts!! And to the whole Showit team… thank you for being an INCREDIBLE example of love and service! AND thank you for the opportunity to be a part of Showit United 2013! ;)

 

Amazing Lives, Amazing Marriages, Amazing Photos

Dreaming, Our Dreams  //  26th February 2013

We interrupt the regularly (or irregularly, lately) scheduled program for this special news bulletin about Liz and Ryan! :)… First, we just have to apologize for the irregular part! We are learning a lot about travel and working and how wifi is not as regularly available as we had become used to in the comfort of home! Thank you for learning along with us and being patient as we get ourselves together! ;)

And now onto the new bulletin! ;)

Happy Tuesday friends! Over the past few weeks Liz and I have been discussing ways we can make our blog more useful to everyone who visits! As we have written about before, our passion is to help people live a more AMAZING life and have more AMAZING marriages! In addition, we love being able to document these AMAZING moments in peoples lives through our photography. In order to best serve you, our readers and friends, we have decided to develop a little plan that will (hopefully ;) ) create some consistency on our blog and make it a more enjoyable experience for you!

On Mondays, we are excited to start sharing posts with a theme of “AMAZING marriages.” In the AMAZING marriage posts, we will share experiences, both personal and from other couples that have taught us how to always choose love first to make our marriage amazing each and everyday!

Wednesdays will now be featuring posts about living an AMAZING life. Each day we are given is a gift and it should be celebrated! Life can be tough and we recognize that. Through the everyday stresses of life, we recognize that we always have the opportunity to choose happiness. Our good friend, Lauren Wakefield, summed it up best. “Sh*t happens, but we are still going to eat cupcakes!” The posts we share on Wednesdays will include things we do to make everyday moments just a little more AMAZING! Wednesdays will also be the days that include some of our favorite topics (Ryan Cooks, Liz’s DIY) and our AMAZING Life Manifesto videos too!

Friday is still a work in progress! One thing is for sure, we hope that after reading our Friday posts that you are inspired to have an AMAZING weekend. A few of the ideas we are currently hoping to include are recipes for Breakfast in Bed, Friday Favorites, the Liz and Ryan Book Club, ways to make Love and Service your way of life, and how to make big dreams happen.

Tuesdays and Thursdays will be dedicated to photography. We will be sharing our work from our most recent sessions on these days! I am also a little bit of a tech nerd, and as long as Liz lets me ( ;) ), I hope to start sharing a little bit more of my technical side and why I love photography!

We plan to consistently post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:00 a.m EST. Our goal is also to post Tuesday and Thursday posts at 9:00 a.m. EST, but depending on how crazy the wedding season gets, you may have to forgive us a bit!

Can you tell we are Type A people?!? ;) We felt like we needed to create and share this little scheduled plan for all of our other Type A friends out there! ;) One of our favorite bloggers, Chris Guillebeau is always SO CONSISTENT with his blogging- and knowing that he will be posting on Monday and Thursdays definitely gets us even more excited for those days! We can only hope that you all will share that same excitement for our new and improved plan! ;)

As we begin to implement these changes, we would LOVE to hear from you all and what you would like to read about! If you have any ideas for posts, want to share ways you live an AMAZING marriage or AMAZING life, or would be interested in being featured as a guest blog post let us know! Either leave us a comment below or send us an email at hello@lizandryan.com. We can’t wait to hear from you! Thanks so much for reading! You all rock!

Washington DC Proposal | Proposal Photographer

Love, Stories Documented  //  21st February 2013

When Kevin contacted us last year about surprising his girlfriend, Jennifer, by asking us to be his proposal photographer when he proposed at the Jefferson Memorial, we literally jumped up and down. Seriously… picture Ryan checking the emails and saying, “That is so fun.” And then I say, “What, What is so fun?” And then I literally run over to Ryan and both of us hover around the computer reading Kevin’s email with a whole lot of excitement to follow!

Having a guy contact us about surprising his soon to be fiancé is magical to us! But having him ask us to be a part of it is even that much more magical! Not to mention, Kevin shared with us that Jennifer was a blog reader and the Maid of Honor in Allison and Tom’s wedding from a year and half ago! Ohh my goodness- yes we were super super pumped!

Photographing a proposal is always a little tricky… as much as we plan ahead of time, we are always a bit nervous. What if the timing doesn’t work out the way we had planned and we actually miss it because they arrived earlier than planned? Or what if the taxi driver knows a different entrance and drops them off there? Or what if the sun sets early?!? Haha! I know that’s not really possible. But if these are the thoughts going through my mind, I can only imagine the thoughts that were going through Kevin’s.

Kevin handled EVERYTHING so calmly and with so much joy! His “story” was that they were going to be attending an event at the Memorial. When they arrived to the Memorial and did not see the friends they were supposed to be meeting or any other sign of an event, Jennifer definitely had the look of concern on her face. But Kevin, without skipping a beat, just kept right on going. They made their way to the top of the stairs and Kevin got down on one knee. The rest of this amazing story can be seen in the photos! Words are hard to describe the pure joy, happiness, and AMAZING love that poured from their hearts! ;)

Congratulations Jennifer and Kevin! We are so honored to have captured this AMAZING moment in your love story!