As Lesley was getting her hair and makeup done for the wedding, Kelsey, one of her beautiful bridesmaids, shared the news that the wedding flowers had arrived! Lesley was so excited to see them! She said that she had absolutely no idea what they were going to look like because she did not give the florist any direction at all! She just told her to do her thing. ;)
AMAZING! Seriously. I almost gave Lesley a high-five right then and there when she told us that… without even seeing the flowers! She had so much trust in the wedding professionals she was surrounded by that she knew she could be hands off. She didn’t have to worry about them not coming out as she had planned because she had complete faith that the professional florist she had doing her flowers would do an AMAZING job!
And an AMAZING job she did! I have said this so many times since Lesley and Clayton’s wedding: We have never seen wedding flowers that were so absolutely perfectly fitting for that day! Anne from Charleston Stems wowed us in so many ways! The florals were so perfect…. so so perfect. They were not over the top or distracting, they were just perfect accents to Lesley and Clayton’s amazingly beautiful nautical day.
We share this as a lesson learned and perfect reminder to all of us: We hire professionals for a reason! They are professionals at what they do and when given the autonomy they will likely do a better job than any of us could ever dream it to be! ;) I know sometimes we even struggle to take a step back when hiring a professional for different things, but we are the first ones to celebrate when we know our couples and clients have 100% pure confidence in us! As a professional, that is the best feeling in the world! ;)
Anne, thank you for wowing us and helping to make Lesley and Clayton’s day even more beautiful than we could have ever imagined! You are quite talented and it was such an honor to work with you!
A few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Ohio hanging out with Ashley and Jeremy Kester, two people who have touched our hearts in big ways with very limited time we have spent in the same place at the same time! We were chatting about their most recent business ventures and soaking in the passion that poured from their hearts!
Jeremy was sharing his heart and love for H.H. Boogie (a company he and his AMAZING wife started over a year ago). They produce the most gorgeous wooden keepsake boxes that we have come to love in so many ways! ;) More to share on these in the future…
But as we were sitting there, Jeremy was explaining that when he shares wedding images with his clients, he pulls out a sampling of photos and explains the meaning behind that image and why he took it. He writes the story on the back of the image and gives that gift to his clients. Whoa. That is magical. That hit me. Every single image that we take has a story within itself. Just as our brides and grooms have their own emotional memory and story of their images, we often have our own little stories of why we took that image at the moment that we did. We often share those stories with our couples during their reveal party (which is why we LOVE doing reveal parties so much!!!) But we thought it would be fun to start sharing 1 or 2 images from each of our weddings along with our emotional memory or story of that image here on the blog!
These images will not always be the “prettiest,” but they certainly are pretty on the heart and we can’t wait to share them with you!
To kick things off, here is one of our favorite images from Jill and Tripp’s wedding:
Most people looking at it would see a regular old high five. Pretty awesome. But actually the story is even more awesome. This is probably one of 10 high fives Jill’s mom has given in her lifetime. She does not like high fives and thinks they are strange. (Side note: I just heard a commercial on the radio yesterday about how strange high fives are because it is as if you are hitting each other. Haha… too funny. To be completely honest, up until Jill’s mom shared her dislike for high fives, I had never heard of that before! ;) ). Only on super special occasions will she give a high five. I would say by the look on their faces, this is certainly a high five worthy super special occasion! ;)
When I look at this photo, I see pure joy. Jill’s mom was a source of pure joy throughout Jill and Tripp’s entire day (and beyond!)! She radiated! And when she was in the same room as us, we knew it because the positive energy just flowed everywhere! I am not kidding, I am pretty sure there was not a moment on Jill and Tripp’s day that she did not have a gorgeous smile beaming from her face! We hope this image will be a forever reminder of what pure joy looks like! (It certainly will for us!)
If you have been following along over at AMAZING Life Together, then you already know we are embarking on a Road Trip! ;) SO FUN! (If you are not following along over at AMAZING Life Together, come join us! We will definitely be sharing more and more of the behind the scenes over there- so come hang out with us at http://www.amazinglifetogether.com).
Okay- the road trip! So exciting! We are on a mission to document and share AMAZING real couple’s stories in an effort to inspire couples to live a more AMAZING life together! The AMAZING Life Together Road Trip will be ongoing throughout the year in between our busy wedding season and we plan to visit cities all over the United States (and maybe even beyond! ;) )! Our first leg of the journey will be taking us to Salt Lake City (and of course Park City too), San Francisco, LA, San Diego, and Phoenix… and everywhere in between! If you are in those areas and/or you know of an AMAZING couple in those areas, send us a note! ;) We would LOVE to hear from you!!
Friends, we are so incredibly excited to have the opportunity to be out and about meeting AMAZING couples, chatting about love, learning from the challenges they have faced along the way, and sharing these AMAZING stories with you all over at amazinglifetogether.com! It is our dream to touch the lives of couples all over the world and hopefully touch their hearts in a special way! Together, with your help, we do believe we can lower the divorce rate! ;) We know it is quite audacious, but the real truth is that we would love for the divorce rate to be zero! ;) We have a lot of work to do, but we definitely believe we all have a lot of love to share… and now is a better time than ever to start spreading that love all around! ;)
Join us for our AMAZING Life Together journey over at http://www.amazinglifetogether.com. While we are out and about, we will definitely try to keep you updated as much as possible, and of course we will continue to share our Liz and Ryan photos here (we have a few engagement sessions scheduled amongst our travels out west and we are SO EXCITED to share them with you!)! But if you want more updates from our road trip- come join us at AMAZING Life Together too!
What an exciting morning! You all have pretty much blown our minds over here! It was so much fun to see you all get so excited for the Anniversary Session Giveaway photo contest on Facebook! We had over 2,000 votes come in and we could not be more excited to announce the winners!!! But first… a super huge THANK YOU to every single person who took the time to vote and an even huger (haha) THANK YOU to all of our AMAZING couples for just being so AMAZING!
Last night Ryan made an excel sheet to make sure we calculated the number of entries correctly (of course, because that is what engineers do! ;) ), and then we utilized a random number generator on-line to tell us that Jill and Tripp are the big winners of the Anniversary session!!! YAYAYAYAY!! So excited for them! Jill and Tripp are getting married in April- so this will be a super fun pre-wedding surprise for them! ;) YAY!
Thanks again to everyone who voted and even more importantly to everyone who got just as excited as we did about giving away the photo session!!! That made our hearts smile! We are so grateful for you all! Happy Monday!
We sat at MeMe’s house in a room full of love and warmth. The conversations were flowing while the kids were running around jumping in and out of huge cardboard boxes that took over any open floor space that was remaining! That pretty much paints the picture of MeMe’s house on Christmas Eve. Except, add to that my cousin Jenna reading T’was the Night Before Christmas, my aunts leading us in Christmas carols and then getting half way and realizing none of us know the words ;) (but we continue anyway), Santa arriving and the little ones mouth wide open AMAZINGNESS filling the room with joy! That might paint an even clearer picture for you! ;) It is pretty much magical!
Can you see where we get our magical excitement from?!? ;) You are never too old to BELIEVE! ;) Thank you MeMe! ;)
Every year, we exchange names and have a huge gift exchange where every family takes the “hot seat” and opens their gift in front of everyone! It is always so special to be able to see the excitement on everyone’s faces as they give their gifts and watch each other open them! This year, when it came time for us to be in the “hot seat” Mike came over and handed us our present from he and Jessie (unfortunately Jessie wasn’t able to join us because she was in NC celebrating with her family, but we knew she was there in spirit!). As we started opening the gifts one by one, we realized that they put together a little film developing kit for us!
Side note: Mike and his family created their very own dark room in their home. They have such a special appreciation for photography and the art that can often get lost in the “digital age!” When we were down in NC visiting with Jessie and Mike and photographing their engagement session, Mike showed us his collection of old film cameras that he had collected! Seriously, we were in awe and so energized by his passion and appreciation of these old cameras! Mike and Jessie frequent antique stores often and every once in awhile find a gem of a camera! Even if it is not working, Mike will bring it home and give it some love to bring it back to life!
So, we open each gift… chemicals, an empty bottle, random supplies needed to develop film using coffee (so cool!), a roll of film… (At this point, the whole family is looking at us saying what in the world is that!?!?) and then I reach in and pull out a beautiful leather case holding a gorgeous antique 35mm film camera! Enter the tears. Seriously, it hit me like a ton of bricks! I was so excited about the idea of diving in and developing film because that is something that Ryan and I have talked so much about wanting to experience one day that I was blown away when I opened the camera.
Ahh! The tears rolled down my face (as they are as I write this!) and I literally was speechless. I looked at Ryan and could see his eyes start to fill with tears. Normally when I am speechless he fills in my blanks… but in that moment, we were both at a loss for words! As soon as I was able to compose myself and actually speak, I tried to explain it to the whole family who watched me lose it and couldn’t figure out why I was so emotional (besides the Lorson genes that make me that way! ;) I mean, they knew we liked photography, but why the tears?!? ;)
I still don’t think I can put it into words, but I will try. When Mike and Jessie asked us to photograph their wedding, they asked for something special. They asked that we photograph at least part of their wedding using a film camera. Their dream was to have at least 1 roll of film from their wedding that they could develop together as husband and wife! How incredibly AMAZING is that!?!? I grew up using my mom’s old 35mm SLR camera. However, it has been forever since I have actually used it! Mike and Jessie were definitely challenging us, but believe me it was a challenge that we could not have been more excited to accept! Knowing that Jessie and Mike are going to have the experience of developing a roll of their own wedding photos is so exciting and so much fun to even think about! We feel so blessed to be able to give them that gift and the experience of creating a memory from their memories!
The way that Jessie and Mike appreciate photography is inspiring to us! We are completely guilty of taking the processing of photography for granted with the “digital age.” There is so much that goes into it and as photographers we definitely do appreciate that! We could not be more excited to pick up that old 35 mm and challenge ourselves to learn more about our craft!
Here’s the other thing that hit me… this camera was manufactured in the 1950s. To think about all of the images that AMAZING piece of equipment documented and all of the memories that are still cherished to this day because of that camera is awe-inspiring! We can only imagine the smiles, laughs, tears and huge life moments that have been viewed through that lens. And to think of the smiles, laughs, tears and huge life moments that we get to add to it… ahh! That is happy!
Today, cameras are pretty much in the hands of every single person… between iphones, point and shoots, cameras on computers, ipads, and even slrs, they are everywhere and we so often take them for granted! When I hold that antique in my hand, I am reminded that it is truly something special. It is a gift with so much meaning that we appreciate more than our tears can describe! The tears that flowed were tears of appreciation, love, excitement, anticipation, and awe! They certainly overflowed with the abundance of joy from the blessings that surround us and the AMAZING appreciation for the gift that we have to be able to capture that exact moment! Ahh! We could not be more grateful. Thank you Jessie and Mike for the Christmas gift that made me cry and will forever hold a special meaning in our hearts! XOXO!
