Last week Adam & I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary! We looked through our wedding photos, steamed some crab legs (I have decided that all of our celebrations will include crab legs for the foreseeable future bc crab legs), popped a bottle of champagne to watch our wedding video (maybe I’ll be sending a bottle of champagne out to my wedding video clients, 10/10 would recommend), and had dinner at Z Cucina. 

To be honest, the idea of our “first anniversary” made me kind of sad because I felt like the other 6 years we have been together were being erased from our timeline. I have to say, though, that looking back and reliving our wedding day was way more awesome than I could have imagined! Before our anniversaries were about celebrating our time together and checking off another numbered checkbox (4 years….5 years….6 years…), but now our anniversary is about something even better. It is a time to remember the day where all the people I love came together to celebrate our relationship (insert waterfall tears emoji). I mean, can it get any better than that?  

So let’s be real, no one believes in the power and the importance of wedding photography/videography more than me (like why else would I spend all of my time doing it?). I have always known that my photos/video would mean so much to me and I always knew I would LOVE them, but I never really knew how much until I experienced it first hand. It was so special to me a year ago to be able to feel exactly what my clients feel when they view THEIR photos/video for the first time when I viewed MY OWN photos/videos for the first time! I was smiling a big dumb smile from ear to ear the entire time, let me tell ya. So now, one year later, I was able to look back on our photos/videos and experience first hand what it  is like to go back to these memories. I now know what it is ACTUALLY like to re-live my day the way I tell my clients they will be able to re-live theirs. How I was reminded of a million little details that I had already forgotten. And how I was able to feel the exact way I felt on our wedding day all over again. Man, seeing Adam’s smile when I get to the end of the aisle is something I’m going to look forward to watching every year. (“YOU LOOK SO HAPPY!” I said. “It’s almost like I was, Emily…….” said disgruntled Adam.) I am super overwhelmed by these memories and I am so grateful that I have them to cherish for a lifetime of anniversaries. 

Anyways, not much has changed for us this past year except the married thing. The year prior to our wedding was a whirlwind of events…..we bought a house, two of our nieces were born, my family moved back to Ohio and everything was good. This year we have mostly spent a lot of our time fixing up our little house, being happy that we don’t have to move again (like we used to every year), and hanging out with our dog, Sputnik (shoutout to him since he is pictured below!)

I made Adam take some anniversary pics with me that day (even though he was super tired and grumpy from camping the night before. Adam is not always grumpy contrary to what this blog post might lead you to believe). I don’t really take pictures of myself/us so this was my first time trying to take portraits with a tripod. MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN I ANTICIPATED. I’ll stick to hanging out behind the camera. Anyways, it was kind of a happy accident where we ended up. We were already in Westerville celebrating Father’s Day with Adam’s dad so these pictures were actually taken at Hoover Dam in Westerville where we met! I have so many amazing memories of hanging out at Hoover with Adam back in the early days of our relationship. I mean, what else do you do in Westerville when you are underage? Thinking back on those times as we stopped to snap some pics made for one happy anniversary girl.