A Look Back at 2020

In 2020, parents were still proud of their sons and daughters. Men were still moved to tears by beautiful women. Moms still had the goofiest dance moves, and sisters still dropped everything to help each other out. Shooting weddings has always been a deeply hopeful experience for me, but more so than ever in 2020. I left each one of the 12 weddings I photographed reminded that love and marriage are worth celebrating, no matter how small the scale or unusual the circumstances.

I’ve endlessly debated what else I could or should say about this year, but I won’t belabor the hardships. All of my 2020 couples faced unimaginably decisions regarding their wedding plans. I’m proud of the couples who persisted and found ways to celebrate their weddings despite a global pandemic, AND of the couples who made difficult and disappointing decisions to postpone.

In 2020, I gave birth to my first baby, AND lost the only living grandparent I’ve ever known (within about 6 weeks of each other). I know that these events shaped my art. I’ve always been convicted of the fact that weddings are a family affair, but I have definitely felt that conviction deepen. One of my favorite things about photographing smaller weddings this year was the chance to get to know the brides and groom’s families a little better. Every time I clicked my shutter to take a photo of a wedding guest, I knew I was capturing someone who was deeply important and loved by these two individuals (somebody who probably made it past several rounds of invite “cuts”.) I found myself even more conscious of how precious and fleeting these moments together are. I’ll always love posing madly-in-love couples for romantic portraits together, but I spent my 2020 weddings more aware than ever of the moms, the best friends, the flower girls - wanting to capture their emotions and experiences too.

My 2020 editing catalogue contains almost 21,000 culled images (that’s weddings alone!) and while I tried to cut that number down to a concise list of 10 - 20 favorites, I definitely failed. Here instead are a few that jumped out to me and represented some of the MANY good things I saw through my lens last year.

We made it through 2020, friends! Cheers and wishes for a blessed 2021.

xo,

Emma