Our relationship moved insanely fast. We met in college and within a year, we decided to pack up and move to a new city. I (Cody) had dropped out of school to pursue this rapidly growing wedding photography career while Allison had just stepped into her dream job. In the midst of all of this, we decided to get married and have a wedding of our own. What we didn't realize was how clueless we were in doing this...
Growing up, Allison had always carried the belief that her value was in pleasing the people closest to her. This reflected in our relationship by her feeling it was her job to make me happy. I grew up believing that in order to be seen and loved that I had to have all eyes on me by means of achievement. As I became an adult, I felt the way to combat these feelings was to carry the pressure of needing to be successful so I could create the perfect life for not only myself but the both of us.
We both exerted so much energy by trying to manage these expectations we had placed on ourselves that we had little energy ever left for what was actually important to us. This reflected in our wedding even though we were clueless to it. Then it bled into our marriage. On paper, our life had seemed seemingly incredible. However, we found ourselves in a continual loop of unhappiness and not understanding why. We started to question everything. We weren’t sure if we wanted to be wedding photographers and this turned into us believing we may not even want to be married anymore.This caused us to start inquiring deeply as to why we were even choosing to do this work as wedding photographers.
It took us hitting rock bottom to finally wake up to what we couldn’t see...
We realized that in our pursuit of trying to hustle our way to happiness that we had actually missed it all together. We learned that perfection isn't made but that it's found in what already is. We learned that when we slow down (and focused on taking care of ourselves / find our own personal peace and happiness in ourselves) that we are able to cultivate a much deeper appreciation for everything and everyone in our lives, including each other in our relationship.
This radically changed our approach in our business and led us to the realization that our only job in life is to pursue radical honesty in who we are and share that with the world and watch it spread. It was through this experience that that we consider photography is just one of the many mediums where we have the privilege of getting to pull out the most real, vulnerable and carefree version of the people we work with and give them images that reflect who they really are.