Wedding Expos & Bridal Bouquets

Hi there!! Thanks for joining in on my first ever Wedding Wednesday post including tips and tricks for all of you Bride to Be’s! I’m so excited to share what I have learned about wedding planning, but also to hear what you know from your own experience!

Lets talk about BOUQUETS. Your bouquet says so much about you, your style and sets the tone for how your photos will look. I absolutely love scrolling through Pinterest looking at all the beautiful arrangements, but making them is a whole new world to me. A few weekends ago I attended a Bridal Expo with my future sister in law (YAY!) and we had such a great time! Did you know that there are places that will let you and your bridesmaids make your own bouquets?!

Side note: I actually did this for my cousin’s wedding when she got married, but one of her family members worked for the flower shop at the time so I thought that we just had “special access” (hahaha don’t laugh too hard at me). Now that I am married, working with Brides and thinking a lot about the wedding industry, I find this to be such a fun idea! Making your own bouquet is a great way to save a little dough, but also to have a fun get together with your girls while accomplishing something on that to do list! If you’re like me, learning a new skill is always fun too!

A little fun fact: while making the bouquets, you actually want to insert the flower stems at an angle (stems making an x). Then you slowly add flowers and greenery. Another tip I learned was rather than making your bouquet to have a “front” and a “back,” you should make it symmetrical on all sides so that no matter what angle your bouquet is captured from it will look great in photos!

Ok, so I am obviously no flower expert (pretty much just shared the extent of my knowledge, HA!), but I did enjoy learning these couple of things about creating a lovely arrangement and I think it is such a fun idea to make them yourself. What do you think? Does that sound like fun, or does it add more stress? Let me know in the comments and tell me something that is a MUST for your bouquets!!

P.S. Just for fun, here’s a couple of iPhone photos from our day since I didn’t have my “big” camera with me! Hope you’re enjoying your planning!

 

RHP – Colten & Olivia

Hi Y’all! I’m SO excited to introduce a New Blog series called Wedding Wednesdays! To give you a little background, after doing photography on the side for a few years, I officially launched my business in 2018 and I have been loving it! It is so nice to do something I love and also be able to help provide for my little family.

2019 is my first year of shooting weddings and I am SO excited. I decided to start this blog series as a fun way to share what I am learning about weddings as well as offer tips and tricks for current and future brides! I know wedding planning can be stressful, but it doesn’t always have to be. I love sharing in this exciting time with my brides and I would love to hear what you have learned or are learning about planning, marriage, etc!

Before I share tips (coming January 23rd!) I wanted to start of with something fun and share some of my favorites from this engagement session I did just a few months ago…

Meet Olivia and & Colten. I have known Colten for quite a few years. He and my brothers are friends and I have always loved getting together with his family. They are such fun people!! I just met Olivia for the first time this past year and she is just the sweetest! Fun fact: we both grew up in the same small town and went to the same high school (a few years apart!)

She and Colten make the perfect pair and I can see how their personalities really complement each other. There were so many laughs during our session and I walked away with my cheeks hurting from smiling so much. Olivia is put together and prepared and she did a fabulous job preparing for their session with coordinating outfits and ideas for how she wanted their session to look. Colten most definitely brought the laughs, which is great when you are wanting to catch genuine emotion. They made my job easy!

After grabbing some great shots under this gorgeous tree and out in the field we started to see some really grey skies and we knew the rain was coming soon. They did a super quick outfit switch and then we headed back out to get some more shots. As soon as we got halfway down the hill to the back yard it started POURING. And I mean DUMPING, y’all! It was crazy!! We had so much fun though, grabbing some shots on the porch and I got creative with some of the plants & Olivia’s ring. Thanks to my hero, Katelyn James, we still got some good light despite the rain and grabbed some super sweet moments while doing our best to stay dry. Here are a few…

It was truly such a fun time. You know you have a great gig when you walk away from your session thinking “I can’t wait to see them again!” I absolutely cannot wait for their wedding in October!!

Snow Day 2019

This past weekend Ohio got a ton of snow! It just kept coming and coming. I think it actually snowed non-stop for 24 hours… There’s something about all that snow that makes my heart sing. Maybe it’s because schools and churches are cancelling or that it looks like Narnia outside. Maybe it’s everyone preparing for the apparent end of the world by buying up all the milk and bread (also who wants to live on milk and bread – ew). Perhaps its just the fact that I will be forced to stay inside, cancel plans, chill with my family and remain in my leggings and big t-shirt for who knows how long.

I love the anticipation that something big is coming. I remember going to bed as a kid hoping there would be so much snow that they would just have to cancel school! I get that feeling all over again and I can’t help but be excited.

This was the first big snow that Elias really understood. He was born in January so last year at this time he was about to turn 1, but this year he has so much curiosity! Emmitt still doesn’t understand, but I’m sure he enjoyed the extra cuddles over the hustle and bustle that Saturdays can sometimes be! We had so much fun playing outside, resting in the warmth and helping Mimi and Papa shovel their driveway….

There’s supposed to be another storm this weekend, but so far we’ve just had freezing rain. Crossing our fingers for another big dump of Snow!! Do you love Snow?? Or are you more of a warm weather lover? (I love the beach so no judgement if you are!) Comment and let me know!

Living My Dream

A couple of years ago I wrote on this very blog (you can find it here) that I was pursuing my dreams again. I wrote about how I loved photography and not because it was popular. I wrote that my dream was to be a wedding photographer (gasp). There was so much excitement and yet still some fear of failing.

What I couldn’t see is that shortly, I’d find out I was pregnant. We’d move. We’d have financial struggles and photography would get pushed to the back burner again. I couldn’t see that 6 months after having my first baby, I would find out I was pregnant again (surprise!) and that we’d move again two months before he was born.

 

 

There is so much LIFE that has happened since I was here last. There are so many moments I wish I would have shared, but I was busy living them. Life has been crazy and stressful and wonderful at the same time!

You know what’s even cooler? I’m a wedding photographer. It’s my first wedding season ever (YAY) and I’m still learning a ton, but I’m shooting weddings! I’m living 24 year old me’s dream. A few years ago I never thought I’d be here. I never thought I’d actually have the confidence to shoot a wedding. I never thought I’d be good enough.

It’s so fun to look back on where we came from. I praise God for providing for me and my family. I praise Him for blessing me and helping me to make it to where I am today. I’m so thankful I wrote that blog post and that I can look back and think “wow, look how far we’ve come!”

As I sit here yelling at my oldest to leave his door open and constantly jumping up to move my very mobile 8 month old back to a place where he won’t get hurt, I have new dreams and new goals to accomplish. They seem a little far fetched right now honestly, but so did what I’m doing now two and a half years ago.

I want to work hard for my dreams and to not think they won’t happen. I want to remember that little kid me with my $60 Walmart camera dreamed of this. I want to do it for my husband and my kids.

Don’t give up. Work hard and ask God for help. Look to Him for strength and keep Him the priority. Don’t forget to trust Him and to hustle hard to achieve your goals. If God placed a desire in your heart, theres a purpose for it! You never know where God might take you. I’m cheering for you over here!!