Hello, loves!!
I’ve been getting A LOT of questions lately from friends, family, industry peers, and potential clients… so I figured it would be easier to just get this all out there in one big blog post so everybody is updated and aware. 🙂
If you’ve been following along, you all are aware that James and I recently found out we are expecting TWINS after a long and incredibly difficult battle with infertility. We are overjoyed… while also taking this process one day at a time. After the long road to get to this point, and losses we’ve experienced in the past – we are cautious, but optimistic with each step we make further down this path. That being said – there are lots of questions to answer regarding our business lives and all of those things that come with having babies!!
Here are the main questions I keep getting from people and my answers to them. 🙂 If you have additional questions – please feel free to leave them in the comments so that I can answer them there for everyone to see!!
1. Will you still be taking on 2016 weddings, shoots, and work?
YES – ABSOLUTELY – 100% x 1,000,000% – YES!!!! I cannot emphasize enough that this is our sole family income, and while James and I would love to be independently wealthy and be able to afford to take a year off of work to hang out with our Little Buddies when they arrive – that most definitely is not the case and not an option for us. As things are, we plan to officially start our wedding season on May 14, 2016. We already have a handful of weddings booked for 2016 and most definitely need to continue to book for next year so that we can afford to feed these new arrivals, not to mention pay the mortgage on our new house! haha! The responsibility factor just got multiplied big time in our lives, and more than ever we both feel an urgency to continue running a thriving and successful photography business! So please, continue to inquire and continue to send your referrals our way! 🙂 We (and our two sure-to-be very hungry little buddies) thank you in advance!! 😉
2. When is your due date?
Our due date is technically March 24, 2016. HOWEVER, given the fact that there are two Little Buddies in there, it is much more likely that they will arrive early. The average twin pregnancy is 35 weeks (which would put us at February 18, 2016). Ideally, we would love for them to make it at least until their lungs are fully developed at 37 weeks (which would put us at March 3, 2016). Given all the variables with carrying twins, obviously we really have no idea when they will arrive. We are just praying they stay in there long enough to develop fully and are both healthy!
3. Are you taking a maternity/paternity leave?
Technically, yes… although with a business that is run by just the two of us – we can’t fully take a real leave, given there will definitely be some emails to manage, at the very least. But, we do plan to take a break from shoots/weddings/meetings for a bit. We end our 2015 wedding season on New Year’s Eve and at the moment we have one intimate wedding (with much shorter day than normal) on April 1st that we hope to still be able to be a part of, but again it all depends on when the LBs decide to arrive. (We have a plan in place with back-ups and options that we have discussed with our April client already.) Other than that – we will not be booking any new weddings for early 2016 from January through mid-May. Given how iffy everything is with twins – we plan to take that 3rd trimester relatively easy, which shouldn’t be a problem given that is normally our “off season” anyway. We do hope to have a commercial shoot in mid-January if all goes as we are hoping with the company, which will be the last big project we take on before we start the project of our lives – parenthood! Ah!
Then as, I noted above, we plan to take some time to settle into parenthood and won’t be taking on any weddings for March, April, and early May 2016. After that, we do plan to have a ‘normal’ wedding season and childcare in tact for wedding days so we can continue to provide for our family! Our first official wedding back is May 14, 2016, and we plan to ease into the season from there. I am already very conscious about my scheduling for meetings and shoots, but assume I will be even more so next year once we start to figure out our new schedules and new responsibilities.
4. Will you be hosting your annual Workshop in the spring?
Honestly, this answer is still up in the air. I know that we most definitely we will not be hosting it at the usual time (March), given that I could basically have the Little Buddies anytime that month and assume I will be supremely uncomfortable by then. I know I have a big list of people interested in coming, so I do still want to do it if there is anyway to make it happen – which most likely means that it will have to happen in either December, late January, or very early February if we do it. At the moment I’m leaning towards February 7 & 8th at our home in Chicago, but want to see how the pregnancy progresses before saying anything for sure.
Whew… I think that answers all the questions I have been getting?! Please let me know if you have any additional questions or need anything explained better!! If you aren’t sure if we are available when you are hoping to work with us – when in doubt – INQUIRE with us!! I can let you know if we can make it work, and I know we have already made a couple tiny exceptions to these loose rules that we’ve created for ourselves (like some corporate head shots James will be shooting in April). So please, don’t be afraid to inquire! 🙂 We look forward to continuing this journey and showing our kids that you can do anything you put your mind to – including and most importantly – following your dreams!!
XOXO! 🙂
