Stacy & Jason won the, Say "I Do" Photo Contest from Grand Geneva last summer and I had the pleasure of meeting up with them yesterday to shoot their photos as part of their prize. They also won a fabulous Anniversary Getaway with Grand Geneva and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers from Treasure Hut Flowers. Below you will find their story and photos from their fabulous shoot or click on this link to view all of them in high resolution. Grand Geneva photos hoot in May.
“Planning a wedding is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” — That was the congratulations we heard from a dear friend after my husband proposed on Christmas of 2007.
“No way,” I thought, “I’m a planner. A ‘Type A’ personality. This will be a breeze.”
As it turned out, planning the wedding was a piece of cake! Everything fell flawlessly into place – the flowers were stunning, the menu delicious, the dresses gorgeous, the venue elegant – nothing was going to keep our wedding from perfection….until the night before the wedding. It poured all night long, and our hopes of an outdoor wedding quickly began to fade. Fortunately, by morning the sun had peeked from behind the clouds and began to dry the aisle, and we had our perfect outdoor wedding after all (thanks, in no small part to the tremendous efforts of the Grand Geneva staff, who vacuumed puddles from the lawn).
Little did we know that our wedding would stand as a metaphor for the first two years of our marriage. Married life was wonderful and promised to be, well, a piece of cake. But shortly after the big day, Jason lost his job due to the economic downturn. We learned this just after I had accepted a part-time position so I could stay home with the baby we were expecting. The clouds and rain began to emerge again. For the next year and a half, it “poured and poured” in more ways than one. We struggled financially, and then struggled emotionally after we lost our baby girl. But now the sun appears to be shining down on us once again and all we can hope for is that the dark days that inevitably happen in every marriage will be followed by periods of sunshine and wonder – just like our wedding day. We would love to return to the place where we became husband and wife to remind us of just that.
