The planning.  You meticulously plan your beautiful wedding day.  Planning consumes your time and thoughts.  You pull inspiration from every corner of your life.  Exhaused – the last few days before the wedding bring excitement and maybe a little anxiety while you have to finish a few tasks, welcome guests into town, and realize that you will be walking down the isle shortly.  You can breathe deep if you have had little to no drama in the process, while others are overwhelmed and just want to skip to the fun part… the honeymoon.

The wedding day.  A few months or maybe a year or more have passed and the wedding/ceremony day is here.  You may loose some sleep the night prior; but now it’s time to let go.  Remembering that you are the ones that everyone is there to celebrate.  Letting go may be the hardest thing you do, because up to this point – you have detailed a minute by minute plan of how your day will flow.  Regardless of how long the day actually is – it will fly by in a few blinks of your eyes and you will only remember a very small fraction of what happened on the day of your ceremony. Wedding planner or not – you try hard to let go of the details and just enjoy what this day actually means to you and your loved ones, as well as the future you have ahead of you.  The day passes… and as much as you sigh partly in relief that the day is over, it is also a little sad that such an amazing event ends so quickly.  It is a roller-coaster of a day, of emotions, of excitement, and a culmination of all your hard work months previously.

The honeymoon.  Pure celebration of you being with the one you love, typically outside of your normal reality.  Fun or relaxing… it is time needed to bond, to reflect on the ceremony day, and to be yourselves.

Back to reality.  All of the ups and downs of planning, all of the crazy busy and chaos of a ceremony day has come to the end.  You come back to real life as you know it – at least you think.. but returning to work or your normal routine.  Then you realize something little may be missing… with the months of planning prior, you may feel a little bit of loss as well.  Those days scouring Pinterest, the trips to fit the dress, searching for vendors actually filled up more of your time and were more enjoyable that you remembered and many think – what to do now.  Always best to fill your time with fun stuff for a few weeks to let yourself down easy.  After a few weeks you get a chance to look at photos and videos and reminisce about your day.  Looking through the photographs you look at each other and giggle or shrug your shoulders… wondering what that person was saying when they made that funny face, asking “who was this” for an extended family member you may not know from your spouse’s side of the family, or even say “I had no recollection of this happening at all.”  The beauty of photography & video documenting your day.

5 year anniversary.  Hopefully you pull out your wedding album yearly, but now a few years have past.  You may have moved onto children, and in that case you graze over photos and tell stories of your wedding day.  You are proud to show off such an amazing event, you get flutters seeing you and your loved ones so happy together, and if you have kids – “mommy you looked beautiful” may pass their lips.

15 year anniversary.  You may have had a few or many ups and downs in your life together already.  Stresses and strains, wear and tear at you after this long.  If you have children – they are getting older and your lives together may be more about them.  If it’s just the two of you, you may have drifted a little apart to find yourselves again.   And if you’re lucky you are just in love as the day you met or more.  Regardless of your situation – you pull out your wedding album to renew your sense of why you came together as a couple.  With a few more wrinkles maybe, but your had the best photographers and all you see in your photographs are the smiles, romance, and emotions that made you love that person all those years ago.  See… we all change a little, but the wear and tear of life doesn’t change the base… you can still see the twinkle in someone’s eye if you look hard enough, you can still see how their smile is ever so slightly changed if you look hard enough.  Your photographs of your wedding day are gold at this stage – snapshots are fun and great too – but photographs that can show you the love and connection you have/had with one another have become priceless in reminding us that no matter how much life has changed around us that there where amazing things at play to bring you together and fall in love.

50 years together.  You still visit your wedding album together, and you can feel an amazing sense of accomplishment that you have been tried and true and weathered many storms together throughout the years.  You have build a legacy through your children and grandchildren.  Or if you decided no children.. you have still accomplished great things together.  If you do have grandchildren, your wedding albums are mesmerizing to them.  They see how beautiful you are, they come to realize the value in both their grandparents and parents and the love that made this happen.  You as an individual, and you as a couple have affected this world in some way, and most likely many ways.  If you have passed your love down to other generation – just seeing the love in photographs from your wedding day can give your children and grandchildren hope that they too can find that kind of lasting love.  You may assure them that it wasn’t easy – but that it’s about the journey, it’s about caring for someone maybe a little more than yourself, and a legacy to leave them.  

Every day is a gift.  Every love is a miracle. Give 100% and only expect 20% in return.  Forgive, and move forward.  Treat your loved one like they are a queen or a king, and be their support always. And look at your wedding photographs closely and often – there is a reason you connected… look hard and find it over and over again by reminiscing about the beginning of your life together.