Top 10 Moments of 2019
January 17, 2020
Throughout the month of January, Hunter and I have been posting blogs geared at reviewing our year as professional wedding photographers. First we took a Behind the Scenes look at 2019, which was probably the funniest blog we’ll write all year! Then there was our 10 Most Viewed Blogs of 2019 – the fan favorites of the HSP Blog. And earlier this week, we posted our 19 Favorite Photos of 2019!
In our final year-in-review post, we’re taking a slight turn away from business, and focusing more on our personal lives. Yes, believe it or not, we do have lives outside of our business, even if we find it hard to remember sometimes! This blog helps us anchor in some of our favorite moments and fondest memories of the year! Oh, and if the photo quality isn’t what you’re used to on our site, it’s because it was hard to find photos of us without cameras in our hands!
1. Spring Trip to Phoenix and San Diego
We used our annual trip out to Phoenix to photograph Dean Graziosi’s EDGE Event as an excuse to spend a week exploring Phoenix with Hunter’s brother, Tanner, and Tanner’s girlfriend Jess, who live out there. Then, we took a detour on the way home for a long weekend in San Diego for an beachfront engagement session! Although it was more of a work-cation, we had a total blast, and you can even read more about it here!
2. Our Community Group Retreat Weekend
This is the second year in a row that our annual retreat with our church small group has made it onto our personal Top 10. This time of connecting deeper with our group and casting vision for the next year is invaluable to Hunter and I, and it’s also a ton of fun! This year, the retreat was local since our group leaders had just had their fourth baby just a few weeks before!
3. Being Baptized at Portico Church on Easter
Even though Hunter and I have been Jesus-followers since early college, while becoming official members at Portico Church, our home church here in Charlottesville, we realized that we had never been baptized. We believe that baptism is just a public affirmation and proclamation of an inward change, so on Easter Sunday, Hunter and I got dunked as we proclaimed that we fully intend to follow Jesus for the rest of our days on this earth!
4. Sheldon Family Beach Week 2019
The annual tradition of Sheldon Family Beach Week continued this year, year number 8 for me, and year 10 for some of Hunter’s friends! Even though we were coming fresh off of a double-header wedding weekend, we relaxed by the ocean, soaked up some much-needed sun, and enjoyed so much quality time with friends and family. Good food was as abundant as the laughter and beach time each day!
5. Anjali + Mitch’s Wedding
This year, Hunter and I attended exactly one wedding that we weren’t shooting. It was a nice change of pace, and also an opportunity for me to focus on supporting our dear friend Anjali on the day she married her love Mitch! It was so strange for me to be on the other side of the camera, and even stranger for Hunter to show up at a wedding a few minutes before the ceremony, as opposed to our usual 3-4 hours early!
6. Our Trip to Lake Como, Italy
Of course, no look at 2019 would be complete without mentioning our trip to Italy! It was truly a trip of firsts: my first time crossing the Atlantic, our first European photoshoot, and our first international wedding! Plus, we got to spend most of the week just exploring the streets of Como and experiencing the beauty of the lake. You can read all about the trip here!
7. A Year of Dates
Okay, this isn’t actually a “moment” like most of the items on this list, but we enjoyed a lot of moments on dates this year. Some of them involved dinner and drinks. A very few of them were extravagant and expensive. But most of them were simple nights out for a drink followed by a cheap dinner and a board game at home. We also got in the habit of hitting up our favorite coffee shop for a breakfast sandwich and a coffee the morning after weddings. Then we never really stopped after our weddings finished for the year…
8. Becoming Debt Free & Buying a Home
These twin steps were the most exciting part of 2019, and were the culmination of years of financial perseverance. When we paid off the last of our $27,000 student debt, we wrote an entire blog series about becoming debt free. Then, thanks to those same principals of budgeting and frugality, we purchased our first home just a few months later! Moving in the middle of our fall wedding season wasn’t ideal, but at least we waited until the winter to start renovations…
9. Wallaby Christmas & Benji New Year
College was a really formative time for Hunter and I both, and we’re lucky enough to still have some incredible groups of friends from our days of undergrad. My crew, “The Wallabies”, as we named our randomly-assigned group at freshman orientation, still get together each December for a weekend-long holiday party with potluck feasts and Christmas light scavenger hunts around town. Likewise, this is the second year that Hunter’s college roommates (the house they lived in was named “The Benji” more than 10 years ago) have gotten together to celebrate New Year’s together, but this year we got to host!
10. Christmas in New York
After our final wedding of the year, we hopped in our car and drove 9 hours to up-state New York, where much of Hunter’s extended family is from. Being that this is the Italian side of his family, we did a LOT of eating good Italian food. But we also did a lot of opening presents, enjoying the holiday spirit, and catching up with family. It was the perfect rest after a crazy fall and an always-busy holiday season. Although we didn’t get a white Christmas this year, we did take a 24-hour trip into NYC with Tanner and Jess!
Here’s to hoping that 2020 has even more wonderful memories 🙂 If you’d like more behind-the-scenes looks at our lives as photographers, click here! Or click here to read more about life with Hunter and Sarah!
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In the mood for more “Best of” Blogs? Check out ones from other years!