Missed connections

Our wedding photographer (Craig Mitchelldyer) is on Facebook and I've been following him for some time now. His posts are often non-work-related because he's just a normal guy. However, he linked to an article today from another wedding photographer that puts a little more perspective on what it means to be such an intimate part of someones life, but only for such a small part of it.

The article, Remains of the Day in the Washingtonian was written by photographer Matt Mendelsohn.

After reading the article, and as a member of the wedding vendor community, I must say that his feelings are dead-on. We often find ourselves wondering what our customers are up to after the big day. We have a sense of connection, but it almost always gets lost on the day of the wedding (or the day we ship the product).

We rarely hear how the wedding actually went, or what the guests thought of the menus, table numbers, etc. at the reception. We often have brides telling us that they'll send us pictures of the event, but rarely receive them.

There really is almost a sense of lost friendship once it's all said and done. We've built a bond with these people, become a part of their day, and then it's done. Just like that. A flash in the pan, and we usually don't even get to see that much.

So here is the full comment that I left on Craig's Facebook wall in response to the article. I didn't realize how much I was going to write until I started...


Amazing article Craig. Thanks so much for sharing.

When you met us and shot our wedding back in November of '08, I was working in IT, and my wife Amanda wasn't working. We didn't have a ton of money to spend on the wedding and received a lot of financial help from her parents. Her mom (a self-trained graphic designer) helped us design our invitations and we printed and cut them ourselves.

She had been doing this for a few months prior to us needing them as a hobby/business on Etsy. She continued to do this throughout the time leading up to our wedding as a way to help finance the event. It eventually grew into a full-time business for her.

Fast forward a year and a half after our wedding, and our son Jameson was born. Four months later, my mother-in-law is burnt out / bored with the wedding stationery business that she's created.

At the same time, Amanda and I are desperately searching for a way for me to quit my job and stay home with our son. So we talked with my mother-in-law, and decided to try taking over the business so that I could stay home, and she could move on to something that was more interesting for her.

Now two and a half years later, Amanda runs the stationery business, and I am a full-time stay at home dad!

We often have some of the same thoughts about our customers as what Matt expressed in this article. We feel as though we are so much a part of their lives right up to the wedding, and then nothing... They're off of our radar and we rarely hear any more about them.

Of course a few of them return to order other products in the future, or they refer a friend, and we get to hear a glimpse of their story from the friend's perspective. But that's it.

Amanda has made some friends that she keeps in contact with here on Facebook, but beyond that we truly have no idea what has happened to the fairy tale that we helped produce.

We are working on putting together a wedding map on our website to help showcase some of the products that we've sold, and where in the world they've ended up. We hope to be able to include some small tidbits of the story of each couple as well, but so much of that will have to come from them. It just seems like it would make the whole thing more real, more personal, more interesting. I hope that our customers will feel the same way and help us to build a living map of the stories that we've been a part of.

Amanda and I certainly cherish the memories that you helped us capture on our wedding day. We still go back to the Edgefield as often as possible, and walk around the grounds. We stop on the hill behind the Winery Wing and look at the water tower. We walk through the vineyard and always take our own pictures in the same place that you took some for us (including the one you used for the DVD label). We hang out on the balconies and remember the first kiss.

We remember the rainbow that happened just before she walked down the aisle. I couldn't see it from where I was out in front of Blackberry Hall, but she could from the back door where she was waiting to make her entrance. You were inside waiting for her to come in, so you weren't able to get a shot of it, but it is still one of our favorite memories.

All in all, the memories that photographers help their clients capture are often the ones that get remembered the best, because there is always physical proof to remind us. The memories that don't get captured, the ones that live only in our minds, and the lives that continue to create more memories are the true reason for the day.

But without the memories that do get captured by the photographers, those moments can only live on as long as someone remembers them well enough to tell someone else. Photographs can help so much with keeping those memories alive. And Matt is right, it's not all about the little details of the wedding day. Those are all just for show. The details that truly matter are those that happen after the cameras leave, the fairy tale is over, and life goes back to being normal (whatever that is).

Oh look, a shiny new address!

You may have noticed that Lucky Dad is now located at a new address. Well, I finally took the plunge and registered my own domain www.brianheston.com. So, from here on out, Lucky Dad will be a part of my personal website rather than Blogger/BlogSpot and can be found at lucky-dad.brianheston.com.

Thanks for following,
Brian

We have a new office!

Well, our office project is nearly complete. We still have a little bit of finish work to do and a heat pump to be installed, but Amanda is now doing all of her work in the new office.

The building started out looking like this:

And now it looks like this:

You can see all of our progress pictures here: The New Office

I haven't kept up on the blog, because we've been focusing everything on getting this done. It's been a huge learning experience for me. Amanda says she'll never ask for another project like this again. And I'm pretty sure my father-in-law wishes he hadn't retired! :-)

Overall though, this has been an awesome summer and all of the hard work has finally paid off. I'm hoping that, with this project pretty much behind us now, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming and life will return to normal again.

One of the best parts of this whole thing, is that Jamey finally gets his own room. Until Amanda was able to move into the new space, Jamey had been stuck in about a 6'x10' room with no closet. Now he has a much larger room with space for all of his toys (which gets them out of our living room) and a closet. He loves it!

I have taken over his old room as my office/hobby room, which should be plenty of space for now.

We had moved everything out of the building and into our house (and my in-law's garage) prior to the renovation. Now that we each have our own spaces again, we can all get our things organized and not be tip-toeing around each other anymore. We finally have our house back! :-)

I'm hoping to be able to keep up on this a little more often now that the project is complete. Jamey has come so far, and there are so many things that I really should have been writing about but just never took the time. And the business continues to amaze me with how well it's doing (thanks to all of Amanda's hard work). Life certainly has changed around here. And it's definitely for the better!

Wow, it's been a long time

So I haven't really been been keeping up with the blogging, because I've been busy keeping up with my son. He just turned two last week, and is turning out to be an awesome little guy!

He is so happy, and everyone who meets him adores him. My wife and I have been amazed at how happy and friendly he is all the time. The only time that he really gets crabby or naughty is when he's ready for bed. But since we've realized this, he's been even easier to put down for naps, and to bed at night. We just have to catch him at the right time. If we wait too long, he can get over-tired and things can get a little hairy... :-/

The business is still going along quite well, with Amanda continuing to run it and me continuing to be Jamey's primary care-giver. We both love this arrangement since we are both doing something we love. It's amazing how much better life is when you're not doing something because you have to, but rather because you want to. I am actually looking to completely quit my old day job (again). I've been working one day a week for about the last eighteen months now, but it's time to stop that and only work projects now. Doing this will allow us just that much more freedom to schedule our lives and do what we need/want to do whenever we feel the need/want. :-)

It still blows me away that we have this opportunity. I feel like I'm practically retired at age 34. My father-in-law is now looking to retire soon as well, and this has really driven home the feeling, because once that happens no one will be leaving the house on a regular basis to go to work. Our only obligations will be to get our packages to the post office. It's kinda crazy when you think about it!

In order to facilitate the growing business, we have decided to move it into one of our out buildings. This will nearly double the amount of space that we can dedicate to the business, and will make it much easier to setup an efficient workflow. It might be a bit of a slow process, but it will definitely be worth it in the end. The building is currently being used for storage for a lot of our extra/seasonal stuff. In order to allow us to use it for the business, it is going to take some slight upgrading including some electrical changes, weather-sealing, flooring, and paint. We also purchased a ton of shelving from one of our small suppliers who recently went out of business, so we'll have plenty of space to organize the business stock, and some more left over to help organize the storage space. It's an exciting change, and Amanda and I can't wait for it to be completed.

I'll also have a small workshop area in the building like I do now, and am looking at ways to add some new items to our product line! It will give me something more to tinker with, and hopefully allow us to grow the business even further. :-)

I guess that's about it for now. Maybe I'll post some pictures soon of the building before we got started, and some progress pictures along the way...