We are so beyond blessed to be able to work with such amazing couples each year.  And as I was getting this year’s gifts prepped and ready to send out, it hit me once again that I am SO thankful to be able to do something I love.  Some days I still can’t believe this is my JOB!

I’ve also been really excited to share what we sent our couple’s this year.  We sent something similar last year, but I never got any photos of them before I mailed them out!  So this year, I actually started looking for these in October.  The lady I called at the Pottery Barn outlet probably thought I was a little crazy because she told me at the time that they didn’t even really have their fall stuff out, much less Christmas stuff.  So, I kept waiting… and finally, Pottery Barn put their Christmas items online and I was able to place my order!

Over the last several years (which began with some thought provoking talks by Mary Marantz), I’ve come to realize that the beauty of a wedding day is that it’s the beginning of a new story, a new adventure, a new family.  And without seeming desperate, I try and impress that on my brides as I encourage them to get their photos printed, to invest in an heirloom wedding album, to not just let their images sit on their computer.  One of my favorite things to see at each and every wedding are the wedding photos of parents and grandparents that have come before them because those were the days that a new family began!  They have stories to tell of their own wedding day and now they’re sharing in the joy of the legacy they began 20, 40, even 50 years before!

So, as I printed these photos and put them into each frame for each of our couples, I imagined them hanging from their Christmas trees when their grandkids are growing up… our couples may or may not remember our names by that point, but they’ll have photos that they can show their grandkids each year.  They’ll have a time when they can sit with those babies and kids in their laps and tell them of their wedding day, when THEIR family began.  And that puts a really big smile on my face :-)

Each ornament has their monogram on the outside…

And two of my favorite images (in black & white) from their wedding day on the inside.

Each Christmas, I want our couples to have that moment together, when they’re decorating the tree, where they slide back to their wedding day for a few moments.  I want them to think about how much fun that day was, but to also see how far they’ve come and how much more in love they’ve fallen.  If this one little ornament is able to do that each year for even just one of our couples, then this job has been more worth it than I ever could have asked for.