January 2022 just started a couple days ago, so to honor our first month of 2022 we wanted to share with you our favorite wedding photographs that we captured throughout 2021-! As you may remember (or may not since it’s been a crazy 22+ months of Pandemic lockdowns, masking, vaccines, etc), 2021 started out with a whisper of hope. As 2021 started ONLY medical and certain essential workers were allowed to be vaccinated. After the initial vaccinations of those folks, the older generations were allowed to be vaccinated- with the oldest first, then decreasing 5 years every couple of weeks. There were NO guidelines for the “United” States of America and each state was left to deal with vaccine rollouts on their own- never telling us when each next age group would be eligible for vaccines. Because of this and the scary unknown of when vaccines would be available to all, one of our couples opted completely cancel their big wedding in January 2021- their wedding which was set for Summer 2021 after years of prep. We tried to tell folks that due to our calculations that we expected 30-somethings to be able to be vaccinated by late March 2021/ early April 2021 and 20 year olds maybe in April 2021, but we totally understood that folks were exhausted, scared, and worn out, so we worked with folks by accommodating their reschedulings and wedding changes.
Because of again increased event regulations starting back up in mid-October 2020 AS WELL AS the bad Wave 2 (or was it Wave 3…?) of the first Winter Pandemic a year ago (‘20- ‘21 Winter) most of our couples had opted to change their wedding dates yet a THIRD TIME… this time playing it safe and rescheduling to late Summer 2021 or Autumn 2021 so that they could know that their guests had finally been able to be vaccinated. We lucked out and were called in to receive extra vaccine doses of Pfizer in the first few days of February 2021 and were shocked that we were fully vaccinated within February 2021. We let all of our couples and potential other clients know that we’d been vaccinated and would be safe at their upcoming weddings. Because of getting vaccinated in Feb 2021 we felt MUCH more confident and safe and after the 2nd shot’s 15 to 20 day waiting period, headed out driving us and our 3 pets to visit some immediate family (who were also vaccinated already due to their jobs & ages) for the first time out there across the country to see them in 14 months. We returned home after that road trip in early April 2021 and were ready to tackle our busy 2nd half of 2021-! Some of our couples from 2021 had booked their wedding and vendors very last second just 1 to 6 months out due to the new availability of the vaccines, whereas other of our couples had waited for us to photograph their wedding for a whopping OVER 2 YEARS of us working with them. For many we’d already photographed their Engagement Sessions back in Summer & Autumn 2019 years ago, for some we’d captured mini legal weddings in 2020 for them, and almost all anxiously awaited vaccinates for a much safer BIG wedding celebration.
By the time Summer 2021 hit all of our couples were vaccinated as were almost all of their guests! We felt safe for a second in June 2021 but still wore our masks most of the time, then we immediately started wearing our N95s & KN95s again at all of our couples’ weddings by July 2021 due to the introduction of more Delta cases of Covid-19. It was a hot mess of a rollercoaster as we moved full-force into full-time weddings during Year 2 of the Pandemic (in a state with very few regulations). Chicago enacted more mask mandates for the indoors right before more of our couples’ Chicago weddings in August 2021 and we had to keep riding it out (always opting to fully mask in our N95s from July 2021 & on again even though we were vaccinated). We can say with a VERY clean conscience that we didn’t give anyone Covid-19 at any point and we luckily (by being smart and prepared with vaccines & KN95 masks) did NOT get Covid-19 at any point in our work from March 15th, 2020 and on through the past 2 years-! We have science to THANK for rolling out a vaccine within an unprecedented only 9 months of our initial lockdown in our city/ state (which was around March 15th, 2020).
Best of Weddings 2021-!!
All of that to say… CONGRATULATIONS to the couples who had to wade through 3 separate wedding dates or more throughout 2020 & 2021 for their well-deserved weddings and finally made it to their BIG DAY in the Summer & Autumn of 2021 this past year-!! We hope you had the most magical day possible and we know that you’re probably relieved to be out safely on the other side. We may have teared up during your wedding days… and we definitely tear up with thankfulness and shock when we think back on what we all stressfully went through together over the past 2 to 3 years (with no “good” or “right” answers to be found on how to tackle it all)-! THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS for always having faith in life, in us, in love, and in the potential of the future. As fellow life-ers for love we know that a strong foundation of a supportive relationship as well as grit (paired with kindness, empathy, a great “team,” and love) can help all of us get through some of the darkest times. Our clients and helping them navigate the insanity were often the only/ main things we were focused on throughout 2020 and 2021, so we’re so glad to have gotten through all of it (especially as a small business and a hardworking, empathetic couple) with these amazing people by our side. Without further adieu, our Best of 2021 Weddings from the 2nd half of 2021-!
Thanks so much for checking out our past year of 2021 Weddings-! We hope you enjoyed viewing some of the positives of the 2021 vaccine roll-outs and feel the love these couples received at their big 2021 weddings (no matter how many times they’d had to reschedule many times throughout 2020 & 2021). We’re all so tired at this point (especially small businesses) during yet another round of a new morph of Covid-19 and we hope that at some point it will be extremely safe & much easier to exist in the world. We ourselves hope for a day that we’ll be safe at work without having to wear N95 masks, but we’ve yet to see that day in 2 years now. To hope for better (and for more to get vaccinated so that Covid-19 stops morphing into worse renditions)!
Here in our city we’re currently on a semi-lockdown due to Blizzards blowing through our area today & tomorrow, so we’ve been inside watching over a foot of snow fall today (with more falling tonight/ tomorrow). We’re trying to reschedule a couple Portrait Sessions that had to call out sick due to illness in the household and we’re planning to have the coming weekend off to enjoy the immense snowfall-!
Our January 2022 (the entire past month) was just very exhausting due to work not having stopped and added stressors in our personal life that were in no way our fault. We didn’t get a “Holiday Break” in December and January threw in so many wrenches that we didn’t really get our planned break at any point over the past month either. We’ve been contracting with a non-profit for DCS Indiana photographing foster children for the foster care system in Indiana over the past 6+ months and that has taken a lot of our time with weekly scheduling, drives 3+ hours round-trip to the kids, and interviewing the kids with a longer format questionnaire. The work has been emotionally devastating a lot of the time, but it’s fulfilling knowing that what we’re doing on that front is hopefully changing some kids’ lives! We’re involved in this contract work for the Indiana foster care system because we were requested in late Autumn 2020 (after someone had seen some foster adoption Family Portrait Sessions that we’d captured in years prior) and filed all of the intense amount of paperwork & background checks in Spring 2021.
On a positive note for things to come in 2022, we’re hoping to make it out of the country again for our first time in 2.5 years at the end of this winter/ start of Spring 2022-! We’re extremely, extremely burnt out (i.e. white knuckling it for 2+ years as a small business during the Pandemic), so we’ll likely feel like we’re literally crawling to the airport, but we know we need to get out of our home and out of our bogged down brains for mental & general health. We have many things going on with our best friends & family in 2022, so we’ve reserved trips for later in the year for some of that later this year. At this point in snowy winter though we’re just keeping at it and preparing at some fun changes to our business this year-! Stay tuned!