Fall in Love

I believe one of the best love stories of our generation has come from my small town.  A little boy and little girl meet in preschool. For the next 13 years of their lives they reach every milestone together in the way that classes of children in small towns do... They shared every first day of school, sang in their first school concert together, rode countless buses to countless sports events, sat through Key Club meetings, algebra, and AP classes together. 

When they were in middle school they played their first game of "spin the bottle" together at Susan Mlodzianoski's Halloween party. When the two were High School Seniors they were elected Prom King and Queen. They weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, but it had to be them. They were good people. They were both smart, athletic, and good natured. They were our Zack and Kelly... without all the romantic stuff. Their peers saw them both as ideal examples of how a high school experience could be awesome. 

Photo courtesy DoubleH Photo

In 2004 they walked the same aisle in the Greenville High School Auditorium to collect their diplomas and then went on to see what life had in store for them.  The two were never a couple back then. They weren't who they were going to be yet. Upon leaving for college to begin separate lives, I would guarantee they were not thinking of each other... In 2013 they reconnected at the wedding of a good mutual friend.  My bet is they couldn't stop thinking about each other... In 2014 they both returned to their small town to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. They were both newly single and the little boy, now a handsome grown man with more experience, wisdom, and guts, called her up to ask her to go for a ride on the town where all the streets were memory lanes.  That little girl, now a gorgeous, successful, grown woman in her own right agreed.

Photo courtesy DoubleH Photo

As they snaked around the streets where they grew up they discovered something new in the people they had become. They fell in love and two years later they returned home again, but this time they arrived together and walked another aisle to reach another milestone together... They become Mr. and Mrs. Lavigne with Moosehead Lake serving proudly as the backdrop, just as it had done for their childhood and adolescence.

I shared many of these milestones with this couple and feel so grateful to know their love story. We all grew up together and I have so many fond memories of them both. I think it is so awesome that they found each other. I think this was how it was always meant to play out. The world is a big place and it is easy to get lost in it. It's easy to make your place somewhere else. Its easy to go out into the world and drift far away from where you began. It is a lot harder to come back to find what has been meant for you all along.  I hope that if they decide to have a family that their kids will feel how special Moosehead Lake is even if they don't live there.  I hope her Dad will bounce those babies on his knee and tell them basketball stories and fill their hearts with Laker pride. I hope they find happiness and love in every day. As the proverbial "they" say, all love stories are great but theirs is one of my favorites.

Their amazing day was captured by Hannah Holmbolm of DoubleH Photo, also of Greenville. She is an incredible photographer and I had almost as much fun looking through the photos of their day as I did my own! Her and her team tell a story through pictures in the very best way someone can. She has worked so hard to hone her craft and is really great at what she does, but she is also a savvy business woman. At a young age she went after what she wanted and established a wedding photography service that delights brides and grooms, feels personal, and produces images that magazine editors drool over. You know those Pinterest fantasies every bride hopes for on her day? Hannah gives that kind of experience. I hope you'll check out her work if you want me to prove it.

Hannah was on top of the list when we were considering photographers. She was really the only wedding photographer that we considered. Andrew Foster was the only other one we discussed, in fact. We knew Andrew didn't do weddings on a regular basis and weren't sure if he would even be willing to do them. We asked him, agreeing that if he wasn't up for it, we would call Hannah. Andrew went out on a limb for us and it was absolutely meant to be but I've been enjoying the crap out of seeing the Moosehead weddings she has captured this summer. 

It was seeing Hannah's work that made me finally feel ready to finish this blog. Her albums this summer took me through many weddings I didn't attend and gave me a glimpse of what other brides days were like. Looking at her stuff is very much like perusing the wedding boards of Pinterest, only I knew all the people in the magazine-esk spreads. It made me realize that most brides let the images of the day speak for themselves. It made me realize that I talk way. too. much. 

When I started this blog I was aiming to create this detailed record of what it was like to make my wedding dress and plan my wedding. I wanted to look back on these entries and relive the experience anytime I wanted. In that effort, I didn't want to leave out a single detail. In that effort I got carried away and squandered any opportunity I had to have the images of my day speak for itself. I made the whole thing public and let my excitement draw all kinds of attention to the process. When the day was over I found it really hard to finish giving the details because I feel obligated to tell you what is behind my gorgeous images. Now that I've told you all the dirty little secrets you know the day wasn't the flawless day that Andrew Foster made it look it was. Like Hannah does for all her brides and grooms, Andrew gave us the most tangible evidence of how much fun we had that day. It was a Pinterest fail in the best way, but it was made for a lifetime and I think you'll agree that the ending is a plague of warm and fuzzies.

Signing off to go live life and be MARRIED <3
~ Mrs. Ben Luce