My friends Michelle and Colton are decidedly beautiful people.

Maybe that’s why they are always getting asked to model for photography workshops, or maybe it’s because Michelle is such a sweet and genuine person and photographer.

Etiher way I’m glad – or else I would have missed out on the start of a friendship I am thankful for every day.

Michelle and I are “co-workers”. I mean, we both have our own clients and our own businesses, but the dream is the same, and I am always glad to share my struggles with someone else who really gets it.

Michelle assisted me at Kathy and Andrea’s wedding last month, and we built in a little time before that to just hang out.

Michelle and Colton are goofy together – poking and joking and snuggling – their love has that marked measure of time to it. They know how to tease each other in that way that youngest children somehow excel at. When I see them holding each other my sentimental heart can’t help but imagine them in high school years ago – both obviously in love with the other – and both too shy to say it out loud until finally one email and another trip home led to another that led to a wedding in a barn surrounded by everyone that loved them, the people that knew it was only a matter of time.

There is something about these photos below that make my soul sing: an unplanned hour at the beach. Rolling in the sand. No makeup. No outfits. I am a girl that definitely loves all those things. But these, speak to me of a real and comfortable love. The kind of love I want to have the rest of my life with my husband.

Michelle + Colton, I expect to still be photographing you both well into  your life together. I want to be the one that documents the way you hold hands and drink gin and play cribbage on a Saturday night. I think that would be just right.

xoxo,
Em