2020 : A Year In Review
WOW. Remember back on January 1st of this year? Remember how this was going to be the best year ever? The Roaring 20’s, back again! Well, things didn’t go exactly how we planned, or how anybody planned really. But you know what? This was still a great year in many ways! For our 2020 Year in Review, I wanted to look back on all the amazing things that happened this year! We have grown both in our personal lives and our business and we are so grateful to have gone through the changes we did!
January
On January 1st we lost our voices cheering at the Winter Classic watching our Dallas Stars beat the Nashville Predators! Other than attending the World Series games with the Rangers, this was one of the most ridiculously incredible experiences ever! Even with standing in line for an hour for a hot dog, LOL! I seriously cannot wait for the day we can be in a stadium with 83,000 people again!
Our plans for our first international trip also began and we were so excited to get first passports!! Although our plans ultimately were cancelled, we are still so excited to travel as soon as possible!
Continuing with the sports theme, my dad and I got to attend Sneak Peek at the Park! We stood in line for 45 minutes just to see the inside of the new Globe Life Field!! Needless to say I was in tears as we walked through the doors and into the stadium! Even though it wasn’t complete, it was still so incredibly beautiful and all I could do was dream about opening day!
February
February brought around another birthday for me, and this gorgeous bridal session with Kalee!
We also had our first bridal show of the year at the Mid-Cities Bridal Show at the Hurst Conference Center. This is where we met our amazing couples, Madolyn & Gio, and Cacey & Anthony! We’re so excited to celebrate their wedding days next year! We also made some new vendor friends and a fun styled shoot for Swig Mobile at the Hamptons of Weatherford Wedding Venue!
March
March brought us our first wedding of year! Kalee and Hunter celebrated with all their friends and family on March 7th. Of course we had no idea what was about to happen the week after. I actually had two sets of friends on cruises that week and they almost didn’t make it off the boats! You can see more from their day HERE!
We also got to visit the famous Poston Gardens Tulip Farm! OMG, I have never seen anything like this and I’m so glad we got to go. They were devastated when everything closed at the end of March, right in the middle of their season, and I’m not sure if they’ll be back, although I do pray they will be!
Well, you know what happened during Spring Break, so March ended with us homebound!
April
With “stay at home” orders in effect, and no sessions or weddings to photograph or edit, I found myself searching for a new hobby in April! So, I chose to finally get to work on my backyard garden that’s been sitting there collecting weeds for the past 6 years! Luckily, Home Depot is not too far for us, and they were able to be open! I won’t lie, we probably made several trips each week for different things. The world of gardening is quite complex, and there’s so many things you can forget or mis-judge how much you need! It was so much fun to see my little space transform! Now I have even more plans for the rest of the yard for next year!
May
Gosh, May was kind of a crazy month, in more ways than one of course! One of the exciting things I got to do was try my hand at real estate photography! A very dear family friend received her realtor’s license this month and had her very first home to sell and need photographs for her listing. Now, I’ve never done anything like this before, so I was super excited for the challenge and began learning all I could about how to photograph real estate!
And we had even more excitement coming our way when we decided to hire Launch Your Daydream to create a completely new brand and website re-design for our business! This was by far the highlight of this year for me I think! I had been debating about doing this for a few years now, and despite the fact that spending money in the middle of a pandemic is probably a terrible idea, I knew in my heart it was the next step our business needed to take!
We ended May with an absolutely amazing engagement with our sweet couple, Madolyn and Gio! Their wedding will be our first in 2021 and we are beyond excited to begin our wedding season with these two! You can see more from their engagement session HERE!
June
Just as May ended with an engagement session, we also started June with one!! On June 1st we met up with Lisa and Ralph at the Hidden Gardens for their engagement session! In just a few paragraphs, you’ll also get to see their wedding photos! You can see more from their engagement session HERE!
June also brought Stephen and I to another wedding anniversary! Seven years married! Where has the time gone? It’s funny because we were always told that the 7th year was the worst, but obviously we had no idea it would be like this! But, as we have with other tough years, we made it! And we will continue to make through everything else this world has to throw at us!
And with another anniversary comes another birthday for Stephen! He actually really hates birthdays so I guess it’s a good thing we couldn’t do anything crazy this year. But we were able to have our families over for a nice dinner which was a true blessing since we all hadn’t seen each other in a few months at this point!
We ended June with another incredible engagement session with Cacey and Anthony! And a little behind the scenes shot shows you how crazy I can be to get “The Shot!” sometimes! You can see more from their engagement session HERE!
July
July brought us lots of family time!! We spent the first part of the month celebrating the 4th of July and my niece and nephew’s birthdays!
Then I went on my very first cross-country road trip, with my brother and niece and nephew, back to Oregon to spend some time with them! We found some of the most beautiful places along the way and I can’t wait to do it again soon!
At the end of July we found ourselves in our favorite place, Fredericksburg, Tx! We found the perfect AirBnB with lots of room and a gorgeous back yard for fun and grilling! And of course we had to visit the Admiral Nimitz Museum!
August
August brought some much needed rest and relaxation! The last few months were so busy between traveling, sessions and working on our new brand behind the scenes, that I was so glad to have a few weeks of rest at the beginning of the month!
But it didn’t last long because we finally got to showcase at the Bustled Bridal Show at Chapel Creek Ranch this month! What an amazing venue and we met so many incredible couples at the show. Over the next two- three weeks we’d have several consults and welcomed two new couples to the CLP Family!!
September
September was a rather busy month for us as we had 2 weddings!! But we did find some time to unwind a little at the zoo!
Our first wedding this month was with Alece and Bubba! Their intimate wedding on their farm was so sweet and we are so blessed to have been apart of their special day! You can see more from their day HERE!
Our final wedding of September was with Lisa and Ralph! What a beautiful day we had, and we had such a great time with them and their families! This was also our last wedding of the year. You can see more from their day HERE!
October
October started off with a celebration of the last 4 months of work… we launched our new brand and website! This was probably one of the happiest days of this year for me and I am so excited to have gone through this transformation! Interested in the story of our branding journey? You can read about it HERE!
October 10th, one of my baby cousins got married to her wonderful fiance which gave us an opportunity to travel to Arizona for a few days! It’s been about 4 years since I’d been out that way and seen my family there so we were super excited for this trip! Girls trips are always the best!
November
November 1st began our Christmas Decorating Extravaganza!!! A week long endeavor and I enjoy every second of it!
Another fun thing that happened was the Showit United|Apart Conference! I was actually thinking of attending my very first United conference this year, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. Luckily, the team at United was able to create an amazing one virtual conference for us, and I am so glad I got to attend! I learned a lot about how I can improve my business for next year and got to know some new educators!
We ended November with another wonderful engagement session with our newest #clpcouple, Katie and Ryan at the Stockyards! Their wedding will be in April at Chapel Creek Ranch and we are so excited!
December
And here we are, December! The end of 2020! Wow, this was such a long year! This month was more of a cool down for us. We planned ahead and had our Christmas pictures done in October, so all I had to do was order Christmas cards and mail them out! Easy peasy. We spent the rest of the month planning for Christmas and of course the business plan for 2021. We’ve got some amazing things in store for all of you this next year, and we cannot wait to get started!
Welp, there is it is! 2020, A Year in Review! Despite all the crazy things that happened this year, we still consider ourselves to be blessed! But, like the rest of you, we are eagerly awaiting 2021 and what the new year will bring us. Everyone, let’s start the rain dance, say a few “Hail Mary!”‘s, throw those pennies in the wishing well, whatever it is, just do it and let’s make 2021 the year we all wanted 2020 to be, and BETTER!
xoxo,
