Last December I posted about my favorite hobby aside from writing: taking pictures of my daughter in my wedding dress every year around her birthday to mark the passage of time (the original post is here). This December we went to Europe to spend the holidays with my dad and stepmum in the U.K., and we traveled to Paris and Amsterdam as well as to London and the English countryside. It was two and a half weeks of wearing the same jeans and boots, cramming the beat-up pile of pink tulle and satin that was my wedding dress into a camera bag, and offering to buy my 13-year-old a pregnant puppy if she’d let me strip her down to jeans and a tank top in public (and in freezing weather) yet again to yank the dress and a jacket on and snap some shots of her in front of the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. She was a trouper. (And I totally reneged on the puppy, which I’m sure will come up in therapy when she’s an adult.)
Her dad had to run interference between us on several occasions (how many times can we both retreat our separate corners and point our fingers at each other–me accusing her of not seeing the long-term vision of the project, and her demanding that I act like a normal mom for once…as if that’s ever going to happen–before we just bag the whole concept and I start to vacation with a point-and-shoot camera and forget all about the wedding dress that’s shoved into the back of my closet?) But we got it done. And even though it was cold–sometimes teeth-chatteringly so–we got our shots. I made some blunders with a couple of days of photos (didn’t realize I had my ISO set too high), but my husband acted as my trusty assistant, snapping back-up pictures with his iPhone and helping me to coax my mini-me into re-shooting a couple of our locations in Paris. It was a real family effort this year.
And now my baby girl is 13. A teenager. Her braces are off, her self-consciousness is in full-swing (“Mooommmm, there are people staring at us!”), and she is still the absolute light of our lives. Happy 2017–here’s to another year of adventure and joy!
Love, love, love! I so look forward to these photos every year. I actually (wink) feel better knowing that there was a lot of grief and drama behind the final shots-after all, you make it seem effortless, and the rest of us mere mortals are left wondering how we didn’t do something nearly as wonderful to mark the passage of time for our own offspring 🙂 This year’s photo session will certainly be one to treasure moving forward.
Haha–“effortless” is a total façade! I think she enjoys making me beg for the shots, but we always kiss and make up instantly, and I think deep down she sees the long-term value…or at least she will someday!
I’m so impressed with this post. It must have been a wonderful holiday – the pictures are delightful. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, John–it was a perfect vacation and many memories were made. Happy New Year!
This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. How precious these images are now, and how much more so they will be in the future.