What a year it’s been. I think we can all agree that 2020 was unlike anything we’ve been used to. We went through a pandemic that changed the world as we know it today. I started out the year pretty normal, photographed a couple weddings in January and February, and they were so much fun. Dancing together late into the night, lots of hugging, buffet style food… receptions were still indoors and you could sit directly next to a stranger. And then here comes March. I left for the UK and Europe on March 3rd. I traveled around London, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, and was planning to go to Berlin and Prague next. We woke up one morning in Denmark to the news that Trump had passed the travel ban between Europe and the US and we had to get crafty in ways to get home. It took about 48 hours, I almost got stuck in Germany without a passport or a wallet, but we did it, and then the day after landing back in America, the world changed.
Restaurants and bars and stores were shut down, you couldn’t go out into public without a face covering, you needed to carry hand sanitizer with you all the time so you can constantly wash your hands. Weddings went from 150+ gatherings to under 25 people in North Carolina, and all outdoors. Wedding vendors lost countless weddings, or they were postponed to take up popular dates of 2021 that they’ll now lose future business over. A lot of businesses shut down. I thought about shutting down. I just didn’t have any work and every wedding in 2020 was in question. But then after a couple months of quarantine life, something beautiful started happening.
People who had canceled their original wedding plans, decided to let love win. They started planning elopements or tiny little outdoor weddings. I’m so grateful that we live in such a beautiful place, because I know I personally worked a handful of “elopements” for couples who had originally planned destination weddings, and Wilmington made for a pretty amazing Plan B. I’m grateful to all of my clients this year, during my hardest year in business yet. I’m sad that I lost the chance to work with a lot of awesome couples because of this pandemic, but I’m also so happy that I was able to meet a bunch of new couples in their last minute elopement plans. Thank you to every single family who hired me to take your photos at the beach this summer, when I was no longer drowning in wedding photos, I got to take the time to capture their beautiful vacation memories. Photo shoots like that saved me this year. Genuinely. I also got to work with a lot of small businesses and provide them content for their websites, their social medias, and things like that. I really got into real estate photography, as well, and that’s been a lot of fun. While 2020 wasn’t what any of us expected, at least we made it. We’re still here, we’re still standing, and we’ve learned that we can survive through anything. Here’s hoping that 2021 weddings are going to come back to us full force, and if they don’t, let’s let love win anyway.
While 2020 wasn’t my favorite, some of these weddings definitely were. We all went through this together and some of these moments were just absolute magic. Thank you again for letting me be a part of your story.
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