I met CC through a book club (started by another past bride of mine). Her and I completely clicked while chatting about weddings and I was so excited when she emailed me about being her photographer. Chris and CC's engagement session included wearing their matching favorite sweatshirts, their Minneapolis/MN tees, walking the North loop, parking illegally under the freeway, and a badly navigated (sorry guys) trip north. So many sweet glances and laughs shared between these two whether in a skyline backdrop or beneath a canopy of tall trees.
February - Personal 10
No dinner reservations or flowers delivered to the door, we have never been ones for big plans or gift giving. Romantic gestures never correlate with a specific date on the calendar. There were years of forgotten dating anniversaries, but I could tell you we got engaged sometime in August. I worked on our first wedding anniversary and he will work on our second, but hopefully we will find a quiet weekend to go up to the cabin. And maybe that makes you cringe, a relationship without surprises and big signs of affection seems absent. But our language of small intimacies is what speaks to my heart.
The mornings we can stay in bed laughing and chatting, him cooking me eggs and making coffee while I hang out on the kitchen floor wrapped in a blanket. The fact that we make tacos for dinner once a week because he knows how much I love them. And how I try my hardest to remember what can go in the recycling and to grab the re-usable bags before going to the store (even though I swear there is something wrong with my brain because I thought it would get easier over time).
"All I can tell you is once you see the magic in the little things, you'll be fine, because magic knows exactly when that happens & it'll never leave you alone after that" - Brian Andreas
This February's personal images from Valentines day. A friend came over with a hand-me-down film camera and we spent the evening making grainy blurry pictures in our apartment for the sake of creating while Rich cooked up tacos and here are all these silly imperfect images that I can't get enough of.
***I always have a "get more personal pictures/try new things" project somehow in the works. For now it loosely seems to be a collection of 10ish photos once a month. I created the category Personal 10 so you can see past collections (but more so its there for me as a way of being able to easily look back until one day I get all these personal images into photo books filled with little notes in the margins)
River Retreat
There are some experiences that are impossible to find the right words. For me, the River Retreat was a moment of clarity knowing so many seemingly insignificant steps led me right here, to this place and it feels exactly where each of us was meant to be. Gathered together in that space.
And there is something so inherently right about women gathering. I think of "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant and imagine a long history of women gathering together; from tents and fields, sewing circles, and book clubs, to happy hours and group text messages. Using each other as support as we chase careers and dreams, fall in and out of love, raise our babies or heal broken hearts.
There is a specific kind of magic just for this.
