Have you ever read an email and could just tell that the other person was smiling from ear to ear as they were writing to you? Without ever meeting this person you could just read their happiness and sense the love that was inside? This was the feeling I got from Leigh.
Both Leigh and Corey live in Maryland and so I didn’t get to meet them until I arrived over in the East Coast. I was honored when they asked me to fly over there to photograph their wedding. Corey is quite the photographer himself and so it meant a lot to me that I was chosen to document their day. From our conversations and the toasts I overheard on the wedding day, I was able to figure out that during the course of their relationship they bought a house together and both took on the monstrous task of remodeling the home from the bottom up. I was quite impressed by this because the task of building a home is no easy task and, according to me, not something an untrained professional should ever attempt. However, this was a project they took on together – a labor of love. They learned how to lay down the floor work, they compromised with the paint colors, they broke down walls and took turns taking on the heavy tasks. I thought about it some on the plane ride home and realized that because of this they are probably a stronger couple. Building a home is very much like building a marriage. Things are never perfect but you make a promise to work together to make things better. Nothing is created overnight instead they are done, brick by brick with lots of sweat and lots of patience. You must have patience. There are days when you both will want to give up, and there are days when you can’t wait to get started, then there will be days when one of you will be tired and the other will need to carry the weight of the both of you. Like building a home, building a marriage isn’t easy. But it’s SO WORTH IT. Because at the end of the day you can lay there together and look around yourselves and see the fruit of your labor. All the love that surrounds you is the love you created, and that, my friend, is the best part of the day.
Congratulations to Leigh and Corey. Thank you so much for inviting me over to the Baltimore to be a part of a new city for a few days. We should do this again sometime! :)
When I met Virginia and Michael, they had a very interesting idea for their engagement photos: matching tattoos. They had always talked about getting one and with their wedding at the beginning of next year what a great way to celebrate a new beginning together! During their relationship, Virginia gave Michael a card with a beautiful poem from E.E. Cummings written on it. It later grew to hold a deeper meaning to them. The poem spoke of love in it’s purest form — a declaration of total devotion and unconditional love. I always imagined that getting a tattoo would be incredibly painful but these two didn’t seem to mind. They laughed, they joked, they held each others hands for comfort. In fact, the few photos I have here of Virginia grimacing are probably the only ones from their entire session. I can’t wait for their wedding in January — what an incredible couple!
