Happy Friday, friends! Wow! Are we the only ones looking at the calendar and wondering where the summer went?! How is it September already?! It just seems like every year goes by faster! While the rest of the country’s wedding season is winding down, ours is just about to start, and we’re really looking forward to everything that’s ahead of us this year! This weekend we’ll be officially kicking off our wedding season, which will keep us busy with lots of new couples who we’ve already fallen in love with (and quite a bit of travel to go along with it!) Later this month, we’ll be heading out to shoot a wedding in Nashville on a gorgeous 100 acre private property and then head straight to Florida for a beautiful wedding on the beach, two trips we’ve been looking forward to for a long time! So before we dive too deep into our fall, we thought it would be fun to slow down long enough to reflect on some of our favorite highlights of the summer! As we share ours, we hope that it gets you to reflect on your summer and encourages you to make a list of your own!
A & J’s Top 5 Highlights of the Summer
Okay, let’s be real. This wasn’t just a highlight of our summer, this was probably the biggest highlight of our LIFE! We got to spend almost a month exploring Europe together this summer to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, and it was a total dream come true. We chronicled the whole thing on our blog, so if you’d still like to catch up, you can travel through the whole thing with us starting here.
2. Our Week as Summer Camp Counselors
This was by far the most exhausting (and most rewarding!) week we had this summer. Each year, we volunteer to head to the woods with a very sweet, very energetic, very loud, very crazy group of 4th-6th graders from our church, and each year, we’re always surprised we’re still alive at the end of the week to tell about it! If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to spend a week showering with your shoes on, chanting in the mess halls and sleeping in a cabin full of giggles and bunk beds, you can see our recap here. We went straight from camp to one of Amy’s best friend’s weddings, where she was a bridesmaid AND we shot the wedding, so needless to say, this week was one for the books!
3. Shooting these Two Projects
A few times a year, a project comes along that allow us to team with incredible creatives here in the valley, and this summer, we had the privilege of shooting not one, but two, elaborate styled shoots in ONE DAY! We had such an amazing team on these two shoots and absolutely loved being a part of it. It was a crazy rush, but we’re so honored that over the summer, both shoots were featured on two amazing blogs we absolutely love. You can see each one here:
Clementine & Lemons (Featured on Style Me Pretty)
Something Old, Something New (featured on Ruffled)
4. Visiting Canada for the First Time
We got to make our first trip across the US/Canada border this summer as part of the traveling and teaching we’re doing with Showit, and we completely fell in love with Vancouver! We’ve always had a strong affinity for Canadians in general because every single one we’ve ever met is so fun, so laid back and just seems to ooze all-around awesomeness, so needless to say, we really enjoyed our time there. You can find an overview of our time there by clicking here.
5. Our First International Engagement Session
If we could have chosen one country anywhere in the entire world to shoot an engagement session, Ireland would be it! So shooting Aaron and Kathleen’s Irish engagement was a MAJOR highlight of our summer. We got to explore castle ruins, lush green gardens and all the beauty the country has to offer with a couple we’ve come to love so much we feel like we’ve been friends for years! It was a total dream location with an absolutely amazing couple… what more could two photographers ask for? You can click here to see Part I and Part II.
In this fast moving world, it’s so easy for us to let amazing moments and memories fly by without a second glance. We hope that this weekend you’ll be encouraged to join us in slowing down long enough to look back and realize what an incredible journey it’s been!
