I had the privilege of shooting a very dear friend’s wedding in Bellingham recently with another dear friend and photographer extraordinaire, Jenny Brookes. It was so beautiful and I am honored that we got to photograph Sarah and Ben’s special day. Here’s a sneak preview of the wedding:
Meet Ansley Elizabeth Lee. A fellow student at Cornish. She comes complete with good Texas stories, great taste in music, dog whispering skills, and ambitious artistic dreams, not to mention her rockin’ pink hair. We met her while standing in line to watch The Decemberists last weekend. It was here we discovered a mutual love of facial hair and found out about an portrait project she’s working on of hirsute men. She sketches the portrait out, paints in the coloring, and then embroiders the beards in. Nice and tactile. She requested that Cole’s fantastic mustache be a part of this, so we hung out this last Saturday at The Teacup so she could sketch my handsome husband. We got a sneak preview of some of her completed portraits, one of a kickin’ Sam Beam beard. Her show will be in July and we’re looking forward to seeing it!
For Christmas, I gave Cole a 12 Days of Christmas present. On the 8th day, the gift was to do a love padlock. I know it sounds dirty, but bear with me. I discovered this on the Flickr Blog and according to Wikipedia,
Love padlocks are a custom by which sweethearts affix padlocks to a fence or similar public fixture to symbolize their love. Most common place of Love padlocks are railings of the bridges. It is suggested that the custom of ‘locking a padlock and throwing away the key’ probably originated in China.
I thought this would be really fun and we just happened to have a lock that was slightly broken, so we didn’t want to use it to secure anything super precious. We decorated it and then put it up on a fence around a park near our apartment. Someone with no appreciation for romantic vandalism took it down a few days later. Oh well. It was a fun memory.
We celebrated our 8th monthaversary last Saturday and am so thankful that we’ve got some great memories to look back on. Our journey as The Bratchers has been non-stop, full of adventure and exhaustion, moments of deep delight and ravaging frustration, topped off with growing to love the hard and wonderful life we’ve been given. And no silly padlock will ever compare to that.
Cole is punching out the piles of laundry like a boss.
I’m a few weeks late posting this, but it was just over a year ago Cole asked me to be his wife. Saying yes has led to one of the most amazing and hard things we’ve ever done. There is no one else I’d want to forge a marriage with than you, love.
