Happy Valentine’s Day all. Whether you are someone who is loved up and enjoying the day with your beloved, or if you’re still fancy free I hope you’re taking the time to feel hopeful for all the loved ones you do have in your life.
I’m spending today designing our wedding album. That’s right, fourteen months down the line and it still hasn’t been done. You can see our lovely photographer Albert’s blog here if you want a peek of how our day panned out. But with this job, our clients always come first, and there is always another wedding or pre-wedding shoot to blog, or album to do.
Today though, I hope those clients waiting for their album proof will forgive me, as I decided today would be the day I designed our album. We had no doubt the brilliant Albert Palmer, who took our beautiful photos, would have made us a gorgeous album, but this was a task I wanted to do myself. So here we are, fourteen months later, still just looking at the selected prints around the house, so I decided it was time to do it.
I do look at our wedding photos quite a bit, as it really was the best of days. We literally had our favourite people all in one place, and all our details were about us and who we are, but nothing overtook the point of the day, our marriage. Most importantly to us, our guests had a great day out which was what we wanted. In the lead up to the wedding, I blogged about the process, which you can look back on here, although the last post was about six weeks before as we were still so busy with work leading up to the wedding!
Looking back at the photos today as I place them in different layouts, there is one photo that stands out that I want to talk about, so I am taking five to write this. It is in no way the most beautiful, creative or fun, but it’s the most real. It’s a picture of Tom and I as the ceremony was about to properly begin. I had walked in, and bawled my way up the aisle, to my surprise. Out of the two of us, we would say Tom is possibly the more emotional. Yet when I walked in to the room, saw Tom and all my lovely friends and family, the tears flowed and flowed. Happy of course, but I was in full cry-face mode. Tom giggled, then there were tears for him too. Once my dad had sat down, we both had a good sniff and a clear of the throat, and this for me is one of the funniest and sentimental shots of the day – so raw, so real, and hilarious too.
Why am I telling you about this picture? Because as you may or may not know, we give the bride and groom the opportunity to look at their photos before anyone else sees them so they can remove any they really don’t like. A lot of the time is moments like this that get taken out and we think it’s a shame. If we’ve kept a picture it’s because we can see the moment there, yes you might not look *quite* your best but we want to help you remember that moment.
It’s very easy in this world of selfies, instagram and facebook for us to always want to put out there a perfect version of ourselves and that’s absolutely your right if you want to, but maybe, next time you see a photo like this; if you’re throwing your head back, nostrils flared because you are snorting with laughter, or your wiping away your snotty tears, just think about what the photo actually means for your memories. Chances are, they’ll actually make you smile.
I remember having a conversation with our bride Katy about this sort of thing on the morning of her wedding. ‘Keep in all the chins!’ she said. Katy knew that the moments meant more than her face looking sculpted. Katy is smart. Be more like Katy ;)
Sending you all Valentine’s love,
Lina x
