I’m a big tradition girl, I love holidays and the meaning behind them! Our lives are so busy, whether you are a high powered CEO with meetings all day long or a stay at home mom chasing toddlers around and wondering when you might find 5 minutes to take a shower. Finding time everyday to be grateful for the blessings in our lives doesn’t always make it onto the radar. Filling others needs typically takes a higher priority until we collapse into bed at the end of the night spent. So we need this one day, this day to stop and be grateful and thankful for what we have. To take stock of what we have accomplished, the people in our lives and the relationships we value.
I say this every year but I want you to know I truly mean it, without the people in the photos below I would not have the biggest blessing in my life which is to stay home with my kids while they are little. Every person pictured below has blessed me beyond words. To come into their lives on some of the most important occasions of their life and trust me to capture it blesses me beyond measure. Even more than being there on those days is being in their life after that. Staying in touch and celebrating their blessings and struggles, watching them grow touches my heart more than anything else.
I love that these photos below represent that I’m not just a wedding photographer, I’m a photographer for your life. I want to see you say I do, I want to see you say hello to your first baby and and then your second and I want to photograph you as they grow. I want to be there for all of it!
So today I will stop and give thanks because we all need one day to remember to do it, to make it a priority. I’m grateful and thankful today for my clients who have become friends, for my friends who know that in this season of life I’m a sucky friend but they still love me, for my family who support me, for my husband who loves me and for my kids who are adorable devils but still remember to give mommy lots of hugs!
Melissa Arlena is an award winning lifestyle newborn photographer in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia who has earned her Master Photographer Certification from NAPCP in maternity, newborn and family photography. Her natural and simple work has been featured in magazines and online blogs worldwide. She has been named Best Maternity and Newborn Photographer in Richmond and Charlottesville, VA in 2023.
