2011
As a painfully shy high school student, the last thing I ever dreamed of was becoming a full-time wedding photographer. But, since elementary school, I’d had an undeniable love for photography and celebrating life through images… even if, in the beginning, those “images” were only of things like flowers and trees! ????
When friends of mine adopted a little girl and offered to pay me for a photoshoot to welcome their new daughter home, I nervously agreed. The photoshoot went well, and I was so excited that I edited every single photo right afterward. After delivering the final images in a kraft paper bag with a CD and a whole lot of tissue paper and ribbon, I got a call from the family saying that they weren’t allowed to print the photos without a release because they “looked professional.” (Cue me Googling what on earth a release form was.) Since I only had a driver’s permit at the time, my mom drove me halfway to meet up with the client, and I handed over a release form I’d designed in Microsoft Word.
That week, I started a Facebook page on a whim, and over the course of the next few months, I discovered a deep love for the photography industry. I read blog posts, articles, magazines, and scoured the Internet to learn as much as I could. As the months progressed, I took on senior sessions, newborn sessions, family sessions, and a few sessions with my high school friends and their boyfriends… ha! Before I knew it, I’d grown a little business out of my laptop and Facebook. Let’s be real… for a bit, I ate, spoke and breathed my business. I never had another job throughout the rest of high school.
2012
In the summer of 2012, I randomly decided to second-shoot a wedding with another photographer. With a Canon Rebel and a brand new black dress, and after my mom took a picture of me (ha!), I drove to the wedding shaking. I got there ridiculously early, and I watched wide-eyed as the day unfolded. “Could I EVER do this on my own?” This thought ran through my mind all day as I watched the other photographer. Everything looked so complicated! The day was long, hot, exhausting, fun, emotional, and stressful all at once… and I went to bed that night knowing I’d found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
As 2012 went on, I dreamed about what it would look like to shoot weddings full time. As a (still!) super shy high schooler, I battled fear and nerves no matter what I was shooting, but each session taught me more about how to grow and run a business, interact with clients, and serve people… even at a young age. I wasn’t actively trying to book weddings, but I accepted one for June of 2013 for the sister of a dear friend.
2013
The week after I graduated high school and about a month after I turned 18, I shot my first solo wedding. I arrived that day with no backup camera, a million memory cards, extra batteries and chargers, and a whole clipboard with every shot I wanted to remember to take in typed into a checklist. Oh… and about 5 copies of the timeline! (Just in case, you know?)
That day sealed the deal, and I knew I had definitely found what I wanted to do. I started college that fall, and I still primarily focused on and marketed senior, family, and kids’ sessions. But, I was beginning to put the plans in place to launch the wedding side of my business in the coming years. I finished all my homework early in the day so I could devote the afternoons to work and my nights to shoots, and my business continued to grow. I wrote emails and blog posts in class and balanced writing papers with researching new ways to market on Instagram. Just your average freshman year of college, right?
I had chosen not to date throughout all of high schoool and all of college so far, for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the main reason was because I knew I only wanted to ever date one guy: the one I’d marry. So, I focused on other things instead of dating, and I’ll admit that I kept a lot of guys at arm’s length in order to do that. Instead of dating, I spent my time on my business, school, and with my family and my friends, and looking back, I’m grateful I did.
2014
In 2014, I booked two weddings. The first was in June, right after I attended the Jasmine Star workshop in Chicago. After that workshop, I decided I was ready to make weddings my #1 priority. I started shifting things to make this happen, and I went into my wedding in September knowing I needed to be able to use these images to market for 2015.
Throughout my freshman year, I’d attended our church’s college ministry on Illinois State University’s campus. I went faithfully throughout the fall, but I only went once or twice during a lonely and frustrating spring semester. That September, my mom took me out to lunch and encouraged me to go back and to stick with it. I’d attended a few events throughout the summer and had loved getting to know the group of girls who lived in the ministry’s campus house, so I agreed to try it.
As moms do, that day my mom asked me if there were any guys I was interested in. I laughed that day and told her that no, I wasn’t interested in anyone. In fact, I promised that if someone asked me out that fall, I’d say no because I had no time between work and school. Ha! She doesn’t remember this, but that day, she told me that she had a feeling someone was going to come along, and it turns out she was right!
That same month, I started hearing more about a boy I had always known of but never truly gotten to know. He was involved in the same college ministry I was, and he was a few years older than me. Everyone loved Luke… for real. Everyone knew him and had a lot of respect for him, and I knew he was involved in a lot of what our ministry did. To be honest, I didn’t think he had any clue who I was since there was quite an age gap between us, but I knew his reputation in our ministry and I’d always thought highly of him.
Evidently, he did know me, because in September he called me by name and asked if I wanted a burger! The guys at his apartment were hosting a cookout for our ministry, and my friends convinced me to come. We barely talked that night because I was in a terrible mood (oops!). At one point, though, we were sitting across from each other in a group. He randomly looked over at me, was quiet for a second, and then said, “Caitlin, I don’t really know that much about you. Tell me about you.” I could instantly tell that he cared about hearing about me and that he wanted to get to know me… but for some reason, I just didn’t say much that night!
When I got home, though, I kept thinking about the genuinely kind guy who spoke to me like we’d known each other forever… yet who I had pushed away that night. I regretted it, and I thought I’d lost an opportunity. The rest of that month, he tried to catch my attention and talk to me, and I still didn’t give him the time of day! He jokes that he had to work for it and considered giving up because I was so stubborn, haha! I just think I was naive, but hey… details, details.
A few weeks later, we both ended up at a bonfire and cookout on an October Friday night. I came straight from an engagement shoot, and he and I pulled in just seconds apart. We talked for a few minutes when we arrived, and we chatted and joked around off and on throughout the night. I could tell he was REALLY trying to talk to me (even though he still left one seat between us… ha!).
We eventually had a long conversation around the bonfire, and I felt like I was talking to someone I’d known forever. We talked a lot about photography since we knew each other had an interest in it. Now, we joke that I knew he was the one when we realized we had a mutual love for “fields during golden hour!” (Haha… nerds!) Neither of us had planned on coming to the bonfire that night due to challenging exams we were studying for on Monday, but Luke asked me out that very night… and we both drove away happy we came. ????
We exchanged phone numbers over the weekend, talked on the phone on Sunday night for well over an hour, and from that week on we’ve been inseparable. He drove to my school to surprise me over a lunch break, he tried a PSL at Starbucks with me, and before we knew it we were heading to Rader’s for our first date with a bunch of friends the next weekend.
The next weekend, on my parents’ first date anniversary, he took me out on our “real” official first date to the spot we’d later get engaged at. He’d planned everything for that date, from an impromptu photoshoot to a picnic dinner with music, candles, and numbered questions he asked me as I picked them. I still remember most of the songs we heard over dinner before we went stargazing.
I went home that night and I just knew: This was it. With some roses, lots of candles, a peppermint mocha and a long letter, he asked me to be his girlfriend less than a month later. ????
TO BE CONTINUED…
