Thank you, Sophia & Jeremiah, for letting us spend time with you on the most important day of your lives! God Bless!

{A&H}

Thacker_268 Thacker_270 Thacker_272 Thacker_276 Thacker_278

We always get in for a photo at the end of the day

For those of you that don’t know us, you’ll need to know that we both share a birthday week. We are precisely one year and three days apart in age (April, sadly, being the old woman in this situation). We typically do it up pretty big in celebrating together.. I mean, why not? We are best friends and business partners.. and, okay, our birthday’s are a pretty huge deal to us Last year we spent our birthday week in colorful Colorado.. our all-time favorite place in the world! But this year no travel was happening, so we decided to just throw together a random week of exciting events… the BEST WEEK EVER! So, if we’ve still got your attention, please enjoy this random blog post about our best birthday week ever

First we must start with the birthday mix. We feel every part of your life needs a good soundtrack. We’re pretty huge music guru’s.. so a couple hours was put into arranging this birthday playlist that we raged all week long!

What’s the playlist?? SO glad you asked! Here’s the line-up that we highly recommend you download and arrange for yourself:

1. Curs of Weeds – Horse Feathers
2. Hole in the Ocean Floor – Andrew Bird
3. Everything – Ben Howard
4. Safe & Sound – Taylor Swift Featuring The Civil Wars
5. Kingdom Come – The Civil Wars
6. Months – The Middle East
7. Night Beds – Night Beds
8. Old Pine – Ben Howard
9. Who Knows Who Cares – Local Natives
10. We Don’t Eat –  James Vincent McMarrow
11. The Daylight – Andrew Belle
12. Safe Travels (Don’t Die) – Lisa Hannigan
13. Finch on Saturday – Horse Feathers
14. Body in a Box – City & Colour
15. Blood – The Middle East
16. Ramona – Night Beds
17. Strings (in the open session) – Young the Giant
18. For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti – Sufjan Stevens

Phew! That was a long one… worth the downloading and arranging though, we promise Anyways! We started the week with Monday (sounds about right, eh? ), the 23rd… April’s birthday! April turned 27 this year (golf clap applause where we’re excited but really sad about her old age). Her day was quite laid back and filled with things she loves.. her work, good music, a showering of love from friends and family and a whole evening of playing the guitar. Not much else she could ask for! Her day segues into Tuesday.. a day we’ve been looking forward to for a while.. our birthday photo shoot with Deidre Lynn Photography! We decided this year as a special birthday treat to ourselves, we’d contact Deidre and get a little best friends photo session set up. I think most of you know we’ve met lots of AMAZINGLY TALENTED photographers over the past year that have taken pictures for us (our personal way of networking…. Hey! We like to be in front of the camera too ) and we’ve ended up making such amazing friends through the process and having hours of fun talking shop! Here’s the back story to this session: It began with us meeting Deidre for the first time, and feeling like old friends right off the bat! However.. at the first location we got a little.. um… well, VERY LOST! Yes for a good half hour we spent time wandering through the woods trying to find where we began (ha!). But once we sorted through that adventure we made it to location number two where poor Heather twisted her foot and became quite immobile! Turns out.. the injury was a pretty rough one. But you’d NEVER be able to tell in the beautiful photos Deidre took of us! You can check out the photos here! Thanks again, Deidre, for the hilarious adventure and beautiful photos you took of us!

(From left to right: April, Deidre, Heather)

Next up, skipping through some large family dinners and love, to Thursday, the 26th… Heather’s birthday!! Heather turned 26 this year (golf clap for Heather, and a little louder since she’s not as old as April)! We spent Thursday doing our favorite thing…. shooting, of course! We had an engagement session (our fav!) with the lovely Alex and Jack, as you might have seen in our preview. What a fun pair! We are so excited to shoot their wedding day!

Aren’t they an attractive pair?! Next we move onto Friday… one of the biggest highlights of the week! Our joint birthday party!! If there is one thing to say about our lives, it’s that we have AMAZING friends! We had so many friends come out to celebrate with us and even had three of our very musically talented friends arrange a bevy of songs and play a show for us! We had HUGE amounts of food, raging live entertainment and of course more than a boat load of friends out celebrating with us. We had such a great time and want to again thank all those that came out to join us!

So we ended our birthday week on an amazing note! We took a trip to Naperville, IL to see our FAVORITE band, Sleeping at Last! The show was out of control amazing… hands down THE best show we’ve ever been to in our lives (and we’ve been to a LOT!). But before the show, we were able to stop and have dinner with our dear friend, Maggie Fortson, who is a local photographer in Wheaton, IL. Maggie has been such a dear friend to us and a complete joy and blessing to our lives. It was so great to see her, have dinner and talk shop with her before the show!

And there you have it! Our wonderful, amazing birthday week! We had such a great time with all our loved ones. Thank you to every person that was a part of it this year! Please enjoy these random Instagram photos from throughout the week (Special note… we found a mustache app and had a little fun with it, hehe…).

{A&H}

{A&H}

{A&H}

Looking forward to sharing more! {A&H}

Punta Cana is filled with beautiful resorts along it’s lengthy, lovely beach side. I stayed with a core group of close family and friends who embraced me that week as one of their own. I had the greatest time getting to know and documenting everyone that was a part of this wedding adventure! Jess & Julian are one of the sweetest couples I have come across. They both have such warm personalities that can individually light up the room, but together can make the room beam!

I’m certain that I could go on forever with each detail through out the week.. but I think I’d have finished writing a book by the time I was done. I’ll just note that this is indeed a very long blog post (sorry!) and at the end of it you will see some “post wedding engagement photos” (Yea! I’m serious!). When I was AT the wedding I had been told that Jess & Julian never had engagement photos done. Well I just couldn’t have this I told them we’d be going out later in the week for some fun in the sun Caribbean “engagement” photos, and we had a great time!

I really hope you all enjoy these moments I’m sharing! And if you ever have the chance, get yourself to Punta Cana for a tropical getaway!
{A}

To Jess and Julian.. thank you so much for your kindness and for letting me hold my camera in your faces for a week straight!

To Erika… Next time I see you we are watching Spanish soap operas.. I kind of miss them.

To the Richards & Cinnamon families (and friends!)… Your kindness to me was overwhelmingly delightful. Thank you SO much for accepting me as one of your own that week I felt so welcomed and had an amazing time with you all!

Best. Bride moment. Ever.

J&J_043_flash J&J_045_flash J&J_047_flash J&J_049_flash J&J_051_flash J&J_053_flash

Ending a beautiful wedding day with giant sparklers on the beach! How Perfect!

And now for some “post wedding engagement photos”… I think that’s a first, right?

{Psalm 127:3 ESV Bible}