Thanks for taking the time to browse my blog! My website is more about business, so this blog frees me up to share a bit more about who I am as a person. Please feel free to comment, ask questions and look around…I hope that it’ll help you get to know me, especially if one day I end up shooting your wedding : )
For starters, how about a little more detail about my own love story? Its a good one, I think…
I went to a small Liberal Arts school called North Park University on the Northside of Chicago. Everybody knew everybody…but most people especially knew Jamie, because he was a babe (I think so, anyways…although I might be biased). He also played on the soccer team, which was probably the school’s most popular spectator sport. I had seen him run down the field with his flowing blond hair (yes…he did have long, flowing locks at the time) and I thought – it’s Atretes! That is embarrassing, yes. BUT I thought it. (Atretes is a Roman gladiator from this book by Francine Rivers that I love…and Jamie reminded me of Atretes) It was love at first sight.
Not really. I thought he was a dream-boat, yes, but we didn’t interact for the majority of the two years I was at North Park.
On the night of Jamie’s Baccalaureate ceremony we officially met at a bar down the street from the school. He thought it was time to practice introducing himself to girls, saw me (and claims he had noticed me on campus before) and gave it a try. Apparently he didn’t need much practice because, well, here we are. We ended up talking for an hour, and during that conversation he invited me to come to Alaska a few weeks later to work at the camp he’d be working at for the month of June.
Now, in my defense…its not every day that Atretes (who also happens to love serving and working with children) invites you to go work at camp…what option did I have? I bought a ticket and two weeks later was in the Great White North, without a jacket.
After those two weeks we talked on the phone off and on over the summer, and then more when I was finishing my senior year in Chicago and he was living in Unalakleet, Alaska. Its hard to call it dating, really…because we had only spent about 18 days in the same place, but I guess officially we ‘dated’ that year. In April, Jamie and I met in BC for Easter at my parents house and spent a few more days together. My mom says that she knew we’d get married after that visit.
That following summer we got engaged – August 20th. We had spent about 6 weeks in the same place at that point, and thought we knew each other a lot better than we actually did…but there was no question in my heart about this being right. It was kind of crazy in retrospect, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
We got married on July 12th, a beautiful day in White Rock BC and after our honeymoon moved back to Chicago where Jamie would start Seminary studies…and thats where we still are today!
Here is one of my favorite shots from our wedding day.
Some of my favorites…
