Celebrating Marriage...and the love for what we do

She clutched the hairbrush tight against her chest and leaned back to examine her progress. Her head tilted left, then right, then left again. "Hmmm..." she said in the lovely melody of a West Virginia sing-song drawl, "I'm not sure there's much more I can do to save you." He laughed his signature laugh and rested his chin in her outstretched hand. It was a good hand...a hand he had taken to have and to hold over sixty-two years ago...and he knew she would take good care of him.

When I was only two years old, barely old enough to even remember my grandpa, he was taken from us suddenly in the night. Two short years later- and many say from a broken heart- my great-grandfather was gone too. So being the ever resourceful little one that I was, I marched myself right up to our neighbor (who also happened to be the town's blacksmith) and informed him that I was officially adopting him as my new grandpa. He reckoned that would be alright, and just like that I was part of their family.

So I thought it was only fitting that while we were home for Christmas, I should take my new husband to meet my adopted grandparents, Dot & Glen. When the talk turned to the wedding I was ready, armed with an album of our favorite shots on our shiny new iPhone. I flipped through the pictures with ease...scrolling, tilting, turning and zooming to my heart's content. It was just about then that Dot glided (she's a true Southern lady, and Southern ladies glide... they never walk) into the other room and pulled out her own wedding picture. Justin managed to grab this awesome moment as two brides looked back on their day. The medium may be different, but the love and the memories are the same.

That got me thinking about this job that we do. Over sixty years later and a *picture* takes her right back there...to the place where they stood and said their i-do's, her mama's lace, and a boy who thought she could never look more beautiful than she did right then. A boy who is still thinking the same thing today. Every time we've stood in the shadows and watched our couples promise a lifetime of love, it never quite hit home with me that sixty years from now one of them may be holding up one of our pictures and going right back to that day.

And this is why we love what we do.