Dancing In the Waves

This morning, I was was very fortunate to hang out with a family I've photographed a couple times before. I so look forward to seeing them, camera in hand or not. They are the kind of people who will always greet you with a warm cup of coffee or a glass of wine. And those are my kind of people.

In this family is a little girl by the name of Elizabeth. I've photographed Elizabeth before, and at times she's been a little unsure of the presence of my camera. But today, this little girl was on fire. We started off at her home and then moved to a beach not too far away. We were all running around but at one moment, I looked over and saw Elizabeth having the time of her life splashing alone in the water. It was as if she was dancing with the waves.

This series of photos kills me. I feel like this is what childhood looks like. Or should look like. It also kills me because as much as Elizabeth is a blond-haired, blue-eyed little 4-year-old girl, some of these photos (especially the third from the end) give a glimpse of the girl she's growing into. But boy, does she ever make me long for the days of being a 4-year-old dancing with the waves.

A Little Perspective On A Little Moment

There are 33 days until my wedding. At least that is what The Knot tells me. Every time I sign in, there's a reminder in the upper right hand corner of the countdown to my wedding date. It's one of the main reasons I no longer visit The Knot. That and the fact that I've determined bridal message boards are by far one of the worst corners of the Internet.

You see I don't need The Knot to let me know how many more days there are. Oct. 6 is a date that has been front and center in my mind for over a year now. Ever since Mike and I selected that as our wedding date, it cannot escape my mind. Whenever anybody mentions to me something going on in their life, be it the due date of their first born, their own anniversary, a significant birthday, I can't help but think how that date for that person relates to my own big date. And I hate myself for doing this. Long before I ever got engaged I swore I would not be the type of bride that insisted the world revolved around her own special day. I hated those brides. I mean, it's just one day. Come on. Get a grip. Somewhere though in this 20-month engagement, my mental state shifted.

It's no secret that I do not enjoy wedding planning. I will be the first to tell you it has been a process, and if I were not so cheap, I would have hired a wedding planner long ago. In fact, some of the first words out of my mouth after Mike proposed were, "Fuck. Now I have to plan a wedding."

But I have. In 19 months time, I have crossed off a significant number of items from my To Do List. And in the process, I have created a multi-layered, multi-faceted spreadsheet that would make the most anal retentive person squeal with delight. So even though I have dreaded the wedding planning process, I have put a lot of time into it because I am the type of girl where if I am going to do something, I'm going to do it right.

The unfortunate side effect of all this planning though is that at times I fear I've lost sight of the end goal. The goal is not at the end of the day that everyone has had a good time. The goal is that at the end of the day I get to call Mike my husband. This fact, this wonderful, gloriously small fact at times surfaces to the forefront of my mind, and when it does instantly my eyes well up with tears.

A month ago, Mike and I sat down with our pastor to go over the details of the ceremony. We were reading through the order of things, discussing scripture passages and then we got to the end. The end, the part where the pastor says my favorite words, where he blesses Mike and I and everyone in attendance and then pronounces us man and wife. That part. Right there. I know it's going to happen. I know it is part of the timeline of the day. But that part right there is magical. That part is what everything is about. So when our pastor said the words he's going to say on Oct. 6, and I mentally placed myself in that moment, it was overwhelming in the most wonderful way possible. That moment is a beautiful thing. It is a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

We get so few of those once-in-a-lifetime moments in our lives. When Mike proposed he claims there was a long silence before I said yes. I think that moment may have seemed a little longer to one of us than the other. I will agree though that I hesitated. Not because I was weighing my options. There were no options. There never has been. It has always been Mike, and no one else. I am as sure of that as I am the sky is blue. When he asked me to marry him, I did pause, but I paused because I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. That was my moment to be asked that question, and I drank it in slowly - a little too slowly for Mike's taste.

These moments, these precious, fleeting, life-altering moments don't happen all that often. And when they do, sometimes they pass without notice. Other times, they have been in the works for the better part of two years. So this moment, the one that will happen on Oct. 6, is the reason I have created my behemoth of a spreadsheet. It is why I have spent possibly far too much time focused on the details. Because once that moment happens, I'll want to do nothing more than celebrate it. And the 20 months of planning that have lead up to it, I hope will be worth it. And I am hoping, if I have used those 20 months wisely, I'll be able to relax and enjoy knowing the details have all be taken care of.