A Thousand Words

That's what they say a picture's worth. I think they're underestimating my verbose nature. I'm considering doing a word count on this by the end. No, it's not a self-challenge to write long, I just know myself.

On Wednesday Adam and I met up with our photographer for our engagement photos. We decided to go with Ashwood Photography because the photographer is my former college roommate, Sherrie Heywood. The way we actually came about this was rather fortuitous. You see, ever since Sherrie and I discovered we both lived in Cedar City we say we need to get together for lunch. We finally did it the first time in December 2009 after saying we should for about six months. Ever since then we'd been saying we needed to do it again. This didn't happen until January of this year. While we were at lunch Sherrie and I were talking about what's been going on in our lives and she asked about being the photographer for our wedding.


I was a little concerned about working with a friend in a professional relationship, but I also knew Sherrie's personality, I was impressed with her work, and I wanted to help her get her photography business off the ground. I discussed it with Adam (can you guess what he said?) and my mom. We decided to make it official, so we told her we'd do it. In February Adam and I met with Sherrie and picked paper, discussed layout options, went over photography packages, etc. and we scheduled our engagements. Looking back it feels like FOREVER ago!


Anyhow, last week the date was closing in on us and so was the weather :/ So I began a campaign to all known Deities responsible for weather to clear their calendars for March 23 because it was MINE and I needed good weather. I am proud to say that prayer still works. In a rash of spring storms Wednesday was the only clear day all week, bookended by gusting winds, rain, snow, and general freakishly cold nastiness. Not only was Wednesday clear, it was beautiful.


I won't lie; I spent an obscene amount of time on my make-up and hair. I think it took me 10 minutes just to get my eye liner the way I wanted. I also took two hours the night before to pick what I was going to wear, only to grab something out of my mom's closet last minute the day of. The choosing of what to wear changed drastically from what I always imagined I wanted. I've been of the opinion that a wedding is a formal event. It's a big deal and people should dress up for it. Thus I had foresworn I would not wear jeans in my pictures, nor would my future-fiancée.


For a lot of things associated with the wedding Adam says he doesn't care (what he actually said is that in Spanish they have two ways of saying "I don't care." One means that the person literally does not care. The other is close to "it's all the same to me." He explained that it's not that it doesn't matter to him, but for the most part he just doesn't have an opinion on the things I ask him about. Fair enough.). On this, however, he dug his heels in. Our announcements and the pictures with them should represent us, as we are. We don't dress like that on a daily basis; therefore, no dress clothes. I wasn't ready to listen and steamrolled him up until Tuesday night when he stood up for himself, I realised he was right, and I conceded the point. Yup. We wore jeans (not that you can tell from the way Sherrie framed the pictures!).


We started out at Braun Books (a lovely used book store where we went on our first date for a reading) before heading down to St. George where the weather was absolutely gorgeous. All told we were taking pictures or traveling to take pictures from 1pm til 6:30pm. It was a long time, but it was a lot of fun.


Can I just say that I'm THRILLED we picked Sherrie? She made the day so much fun! She would laugh with us, say things to make us laugh, and just snapped away through it all. She even braved her fear of heights to attempt a shot she really wanted to try (she mocked us when she found out Adam and I both have fears of heights because we had made fun of her for being so cowardly). I think the fact that we know each other made the real difference in our pictures because she was able to capture more than good poses, she caught our personalities.


She posted the proofs for us Friday (can we say quick turn around?), and of the 45 pictures she put up I can honestly say there isn't a bad one in the bunch (of course, it's 45 of hundreds, but it's still a good selection). Of course there are some I like more than others, but that will always be the case. If you want to check out a sampling of our photos follow the link provided, click "Galleries" then click on our picture (we're the far right!).
I know I'm pathetic for doing so, but I fully admit I have gone to that gallery at least ten times since noon Friday. I just watch the slideshow again and again and again and again. Sometimes I stop it to get a really good look at a picture, and then I start it up again. Narcissistic much? Perhaps. But she made us look goooooood.


Long story short: not only are the pictures wonderful, it was a fabulous experience.
Oh, and Adam was an excellent sport. He didn't complain once :)


(Not including this part there are 970 words. Pretty durned close!)