Wow, what a year.
We don’t even know how to start. I guess I’ll run the years stats:
28 Weddings
28 Engagement Sessions
43 Family Sessions
16 Senior/Corporate/Magazine Shoots
13 Wedding Videos/Corporate Video Projects
Total: 87 Non Wedding Shoots
Because we had a total of 6 full weeks off for travel during the busy wedding season we actually took less weddings this year than normal. Next year, despite having four full weeks already scheduled off for travel we are looking at a 31 wedding count for 2016. We are pretty excited about it but we are definitely looking forward to the next two weeks off before our wedding season starts pretty early on January 3rd.
From a personal standpoint, we had quite the year. We started the year off with the normal bridal show season along with a few weddings and family shoots scheduled here and there. We headed down to West Palm Beach, Florida yet again for another successful week at the St. Louis Cardinals Spring Training compound in the early spring. I took on teaching several photography classes at the local library and also managed a mid spring trip down to North Carolina with my mother to see our family. We had wedding photography travels to St. Louis and Dayton, Ohio and still, despite all the travel early in the year, managed to keep our wedding turn around time this year to around 2-3 weeks average. We are pretty proud of that accomplishment. Early fall was one of our busiest ever as we attempted to load up September in order to lighten our load in October. We managed a full three weeks off in October/November to explore Europe (9 countries in all, check out our blog on that if you’re interested) and we came back to Illinois to finish up our 2015 wedding season. During this time, I also changed positions at my job and turned 30 in style with my friends and family. I think this was probably our busiest year yet from a personal standpoint. We managed just about the same load as the previous year when it comes to shoots despite our insistence that we were going to cut back on family photos (whoops). We still plan to try and lighten our load so that our focus is more on weddings and portraits but we’ll see how that plays out in 2016.
Looking ahead, we already have a very full spring and a 31 wedding load for the year. We have had some early birds snagging up some 2017 dates and we will continue to see the same busy travel season that we saw in 2015. So far for 2016, I will start the year off in Philly for a long awaited photography workshop with the Hoffers, then look forward to our three weeks off in July where we will be doing travel up to the Pacific Northwest, and then we will be rounding out our summer wedding season with another wedding in Destin, Florida. We also hope to plan in there some personal vacation as well, all yet to come! A massive family blog post is also still headed your way to summarize all of the awesome families we worked with in 2015. Right now, we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and thank all of our amazing clients for their support and kind words throughout the years. We really value everyone!
Thanks again!
-Kate and Doug
