One and a half year Anniversary

So tomorrow my husband and I are celebrating our one and a half year anniversary! No we are not a crazy couple that celebrates every six month mark but we didn’t get to celebrate our one year anniversary together so we postponed it to the 18 month mark. I plan to go home tonight and whip up a delicious recreation of our wedding cake, lemon cake with raspberry filling!!! I’m very excited that I will get to serve it on a family heirloom that was a wedding gift from my Great Aunt. It was passed down to her and she has passed it along to me.

Below is one of my favorite photos from our wedding, our photographer David Ng caught the perfect moment and I love the antique post processing he did on it. What I love even more is to look beyond my husband and myself and see the expressions on the faces of our family as we had our first dance. We were definitely not a couple that were expected to do anything special for our dance but we blew them all away I think!

We danced to Sh-Boom from the Cars Soundtrack, remember the scene where they test out the new road for the first time and the 50’s bee bop song is played? Well that was our song! Why did we pick that you are probably wondering! Well when the movie first came out I remembered hearing that song from something else and started singing along to it and my husband thought I was crazy. Months later when he was in Iraq and the dvd came out I sent it over to him and he said that scene always made him think of me. So he suggested we use that song and when he told me why I can honestly say I melted 🙂  So we did a little swing number to Sh-Boom and laughed the whole way through it as we forgot the steps!  We took lessons from a wonderful place called Strictly Ballroom in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  They were great teachers we were just bad students!

Ladies I can tell you that with all the details surrounding the wedding and the wedding day itself I have one memory that I will cherish above all others.  Two days before the wedding when we had a houseful of guests and no private moments to ourselves we snuck away to the dock by the lake in our neighborhood to practice our dance.  We didn’t tell anyone where we were going or what we were doing we just hopped in the truck and left!  We blared our song out the truck speakers and practiced our swing dance next to the lake in the warm summer evening.  I’m sure the fisherman were a little confused as to what we were up to but for me that was the perfect moment of our wedding!  Just the two of us laughing and having fun together, exactly how I want to spend the rest of my life with my husband.

Two more of my favorite images from our wedding!  I am reminded looking at these that it is not always about the best lighting or the most beautiful backdrop that make a stunning photograph;  it is the story behind the photograph that make it a brides favorite.

I love this photo because he and his best man had ditched their jackets and we were just having fun!

Photo Credit to David Ng of David Ng Photography!

Melissa Arlena

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.

melissaarlenaphotography.com