Melissa & Michael | Papago Park Anniversary Session

An anniversary is the perfect excuse for a photo shoot in the Arizona desert, especially when you're celebrating more than ten years of marriage! Melissa and I met through a photographer's group on Facebook hosted by Jenna Kutcher, one of our mutually favorite and very successful photographers. We got together for coffee one day last year and I quickly found out that Melissa is a very warm-hearted, caring, passionate and busy mother of three, among many other things! We've managed to carve out time in our crazy schedules to meet for dinner a few times over the last year, and she always talks so lovingly about her amazing husband and children.

One day she texted me and asked if I would do an anniversary/family photo shoot for her and she told me she would be hand-crafting her own bouquet and flower crowns for her and her baby girl. Um, YES please sign me up! And didn't they turn out perfectly?! The flowers in her bouquet were silk flowers that she actually used in her wedding years ago, mixed with real flowers. She chose their outfits based on the colors from their wedding day and she even wore a necklace that she had gifted to her bridesmaids. She wanted to include her babies in these photos too because one of her sons was a little upset that he wasn't invited to the wedding. He doesn't quite realize that eleven years ago he wasn't even in the picture yet (no pun intended). But how cute? He loves his parents that much that he wishes he could've seen them get married. Talk about a session filled with sentimental value. She told me that her oldest son wants to learn photography now too, which has extra special meaning to her because it was her father that passed on his passion to her and now she gets to do the same with her babies. We even got a photo of her son practicing during our session! It's my hope that every session I do can be filled with this much love, so thank you Melissa!