Would you believe it if we told you that we shot our first wedding before we even thought of becoming wedding photographers? We were in our first year of marriage and two of my coworkers were getting married, to each other. They were planning a wedding within a matter of a few months. Anyone planning their wedding knows that planning a wedding in a few months can be stressful. So being a recent bride myself, I asked my friend, Michelle, the bride, how everything was going and offered to help with anything that she needed. For our wedding, I made the table arrangements with my mom so I thought that I could offer to help with the tables. Perfect! It was what Michelle needed, and I was happy to help with that!
Before we finished our conversation, I got curious and asked Michelle, who do you have as a photographer? Being a professional wedding photographer now, and hearing her response then would make any other professional photographer worried. Michelle answer, “No one. People are just going to take pictures with their phones.”
I automatically flashed back to some advice that some really good friends of ours gave us while we were planning our wedding. They told us, “Make sure you guys get a good photographer, because you want them to capture everything.” In our friends situation, they had a family friend take pictures for them, and they told us, “You don’t want 20 pictures of that one crazy uncle and only one good photo of you both together.”
At this point in time, we were no where near professional. Even so, we witnessed the way our photographer captured our day, and being the Arranger (my top strength in StrengthFinders) that I am, I knew what shots I wanted captured for my wedding day, and our photographer captured all of those moments for us. I asked Michelle, if they weren’t going to have a professional photographer, would she mind me bringing my camera to the wedding and taking photos for her, and her Fiancé Rick. Now granted my camera was just a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot with 21x zoom. Nothing fancy. Michelle replied yes!
From that moment on I was YouTubing anything and everything I could on wedding photography. I even went through our wedding album and was looking at angle and details and started listing out an unofficial wedding day timeline.
When I told Arturo, that I offered to take wedding photos for Michelle & Rick, he was totally on board. He understood my want to document their wedding day. We hold our wedding memories so near and dear to our hearts. Leading up to the wedding, we worked out a game plan on where we needed to stand and what time we needed to arrive to get certain shots before the ceremony. Upon arriving, Michelle introduced us to her and Rick’s family as the wedding photographers! We didn’t go into the wedding with the intention of being introduced as the wedding photographer, and it was the first time that I allowed myself to think of myself as someone other than an electrical engineer.
Once we shot Michelle & Rick’s wedding, we allowed ourselves to imagine a life of being wedding photographers! Believe it or not, we actually have been photographers without even knowing it. I’ve always been the family member documenting family vacations with galleries of up to 2,000 photos, and Arturo even shot his cousins wedding before we even started dating! While we started to imagine a different life for ourselves than what we originally thought when we got married, we knew that it was going to take a lot of hard work navigating to this dream of ours.
After looking at what we would need to do to become wedding photographers, we knew the first thing we would need to do is educate ourselves on all things photography. We just needed to find the starting point. We prayed on it, and asked God to show us what we needed to do, to give us the tools we needed to become great photographers, and to allow us to serve amazing brides & grooms! The next day we found our first photography education course!
It was these photography courses that spring boarded our business and set us down a path that has allowed us to meet and serve some amazing couples! We’ve done things that we never thought we would ever do! Over the past two and a half years, we’ve grown so much in our marriage, as individuals, and in our business! We can’t wait for what’s to come!
Photo by: Asher Gardner
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