Brian & Heather: We Wait

We walked into the crowded room with a hint of anx­i­ety and intim­i­da­tion of meet­ing new peo­ple in the pit of our stom­achs, or at least mine. I sur­veyed the crowded room hop­ing to find a famil­iar face to approach just to loosen up a bit and kind of “break the ice” as they say. For those of you who know me you are prob­a­bly think­ing, “Yeah right! Can­dace shy? No way!” Though I wouldn’t label myself as shy, even the most con­fi­dent can doubt them­selves in a room full of strangers. But it doesn’t take much for my “take action” per­son­al­ity to kick in so I per­suaded myself to just do it. “Jump in there and talk to the first peo­ple you see,” I told myself. As I picked up my courage and slung it over my back, I put one foot in front of the other and approached the first cou­ple that I saw. I thought, “These peo­ple look friendly and approach­able.” Not only was I right, but I hit a jack­pot  — they were one great couple.

I can’t remem­ber how I started things, but all I heard was “we’re from St. Louis” and that is all it took. My shy­ness and anx­ious­ness were put back on the shelf until the next big party frenzy. I was back to the typ­i­cal loud mouth, over exag­ger­at­ing, crazy per­son, as my sister-in-law and hus­band like to describe me. What!?! You are from St. Louis? So am I! What is there to be shy about — we are prac­ti­cally fam­ily! They went on to tell me they attended The Jour­ney which is the same church my mom goes to in St. Louis. All of a sud­den the world shrunk to the size of a bas­ket­ball. How could the first peo­ple I walked up to be from the same city as me and go to the same church as my mom? It really is such a small world.

Being new­ly­weds, from the Mid­west, with hus­bands who have sim­i­lar per­son­al­i­ties, need­less to say Heather and I have been good friends ever since this first meet­ing. I was miss­ing St. Louis so much at this time. The warmth of friends and fam­ily, rich foods, the laid back style of liv­ing, friend­li­ness of strangers, all things Mid­west. Brian and Heather pos­sessed all of these and more. I could feel a piece of home through them.

Brian and Heather, we are so thank­ful that God has brought you into our lives. It has been a bless­ing to share with you the strug­gles of mov­ing to a new city and adjust­ing to a new life. We admire your authen­tic­ity and hon­esty. We hope to make many more mem­o­ries with you and look for­ward to doc­u­ment­ing the growth of your fam­ily. We love you both!

It was awe­some get­ting to see this new part of Brian and Heather’s mar­riage — cre­at­ing a lit­tle baby together. Check back in a few weeks to see lit­tle Carli in the flesh!

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We started the shoot in down­town Burlingame. We have a love for brick walls. And I wouldn’t mind a brick house some­day, hus­band!

Heather is so funny because she was so appre­hen­sive about this posi­tion. She just couldn’t see how this was going to be a good shot.

But guess what is hang­ing on her wall? Yup, you guessed it! Thanks for trust­ing me, Heather.

Aren’t they one good lookin’ couple?

Next we did a lit­tle wardrobe change and headed to Pacifica.

I love the way Brian looks at Heather. Through­out the entire shoot his expres­sions rep­re­sented such a sin­cere love for his wife. It was beau­ti­ful to wit­ness and to document.

I love the work Vitaliy did to this image. He really cre­ated a beau­ti­ful piece of art.

Brian and Heather, may your home be full of love.