Happy Wednesday friends! It’s high time we sat down and wrote a post on this, because SO many people have asked us what our day-to-day normal routine looks like during the weeks. “So… what do you do all day?!” is a question we get more often than you might think- ha!
Spoiler alert, weddings only happen on the weekends… but that does not mean we don’t work during the week, too!! (And yes, we have been asked if we only work on weekends before. I wouldn’t say it’s our favorite question! ????) In actuality, sometimes I feel like our work weeks tend to be busier than our wedding weekends- no joke!
Anyways, in the interest of helping you guys get to know us better and letting you into our lives a little bit more, we wanted to share a quick post with you about what a day in our lives looks like! So, here we go… this is what a normal workday looks like for a wedding photographer… or, at least, for the two of us! To be 100% honest, this post almost feels silly to write, because we don’t feel like our day to day routine is all that interesting! 😉 BUT, since you’re curious, we figured we’d share!! ????
5:15 am – Yep, you read that right… we are early risers! Our wake-up time has gotten earlier and earlier over the past few months. It used to be 6:00, then 5:45, then 5:30, and now, our alarms go off at 5:15! It definitely takes me longer to get up than it does Luke, but once we’re awake, one of us will walk Oliver, and he’ll curl up on his blanket at our feet while we do our morning quiet time. This is both of our favorite times of the entire day- we both spend time praying, journaling, and reading our Bibles or devotionals. I love shereadstruth.com and Luke loves hereadstruth.com, too, but we both work through different studies all the time!
6:15 am – Head to our workouts! I typically run or do the elliptical and some weights, and Luke loves to play pickleball bright and early!
7:00 am – Get ready for the day. This definitely takes me longer than Luke… but I’m sure you could’ve guessed that! 😉 We always get ready for the day, even though 75% of the time, we’re working from home. It helps us feel more motivated and put together… and much less focused than if we were sitting around in our sweatpants all the time!
8:00 am – Start work! Luke tends to grab some breakfast and head back into our office to work, and I usually make some coffee in my Keurig and stay in the parts of our house with wood floors because that’s where Oliver is allowed to go, and I keep an eye on him! 😉 I’m not a fan of working on the couch, so I bounce from there to our kitchen table and even the floor sometimes.
Our workday: Whew, this honestly looks different each and every day depending on what needs to be accomplished, y’all! Luke is an amazing and gifted marketer, and he does a lot of work with that throughout the week both- for us and another awesome business, so he is out and about quite a bit. For our business, he runs 100% of the back end of things, from finances to future planning, to marketing & advertising and album design, to a lot of editing and video work… on top of what he does for the other business he is involved with!
From Monday through Friday, my biggest responsibilities are blogging, managing all of our social media, working with other wedding vendors, managing our inbox (which can be a full time job in and of itself!), delivering sessions and weddings, chatting with prospective brides, creating timelines for our couples, scheduling meetings, sessions, consults and phone calls, some marketing, working on our website, some editing, and whatever else needs to be done around here! I also tend to schedule some meetings and do all of our personal errands (like grocery shopping) during the workday because a. town is much less busy during the day and I have the flexibility to be able to do so and 2. often, our evenings and weekends are full, and otherwise those things would never happen!! Our day also usually involves lots of walks with Oliver and the normal tasks like laundry, keeping our home neat, etc. 🙂
Lunchtime: A quick break! Guys, we’re terrible at taking a real lunch break though! This is something we both need to work on in 2018, but we rarely take time off to eat lunch. We usually work through this meal, especially during our busy season!
5:00-6:00 pm – Wrap up work & cook dinner! If we don’t have an engagement session at night, we’ll finish up work sometime between 5:00 and 6:00… hopefully, more towards 5:00! 😉 I try to have a good routine for wrapping up the work day, which is really necessary for my sanity since we work from home! Usually, for me, that means responding to any last minute emails that came in, writing out my planner for the next day, responding to comments on social media, cleaning up our workspace, and putting away all our work things for the day. At night, we’ll usually cook dinner together or go hang out with our family or friends, and maybe sneak in a Netflix show before we crash for the night! Right now, we’re loving This is Us and Designated Survivor… oh, and plenty of Christmas movies, of course! We both love to read, so many nights I’ll be reading a book and Luke will be reading business articles… his favorite. 😉 We’ll try to spend time playing with Oliver and getting all his energy out, and sometimes work on a project or two- I love to hand-letter and decorate, for example. Lastly, we both love to lay out everything we need for the next day, too, so we always make sure to do that before the end of the day!
OR,
Obviously, this evening routine is different if we have an engagement session at night instead! Depending on the time of the year, our session start time could vary from 3:00pm to 6:30pm, but regardless, we always get all of our gear ready for the shoot, travel to the location (which is often over an hour away from our home!), spend 15-30 minutes scouting out the location and picking specific spots for our session, and about an hour to an hour and a half at the actual session! On the way home from the shoot, Luke will drive, and I’ll import and back up the session. If I have time, I’ll also cull the shoot so that it’s prepped and ready to edit. I use my iPhone hotspot to post sneak peeks on the way home, as well, and we’ll usually eat the dinner we packed ahead of time or grab a quick bite when we get home! When we’re especially busy, we definitely stop at Jimmmy Johns, Chick fil A, or Moe’s way too often, but who wants to cook when you’re getting home at 9:00 pm from a session?! Not us- ha!!
That’s it, friends!! This is a typical day in our life! We hope you liked getting a little glimpse into how we fill our day to day. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
Xoxo!
Caitlin & Luke
