Five years ago we eloped on a frozen lake in Maine. It was only a handful of days after our engagement and such an exhilarating and amazing decision. So much happens in five years, though it has zipped by: we have lived in three cities, bought our first home, adopted two cats, photographed weddings all over Europe and North America, launched a series of Fine Art Photographs, but what makes us most proud and delights us every day is our beautiful baby boy who is now nearly 19 months old. I am grateful to have a partner in everything that I do, I can say completely openly that he makes everything possible and is the best dad and husband, it is as if he as an endless capacity to be there for others and I am so lucky to have hitched my wagon to his.
In celebration of this milestone, we are writing a mini (very mini) series about being married for five years. The first topic which I will cover here is “Unveiled: The Secret To Working With Your Husband”! As many of you know, Will and I have been working together since we were married in 2013. We actually started by working on boats together — Will quit is investments job in London to become a sea captain and I was up for the adventure. It was short lived (long story, deeply dramatic/amusing) and when we headed back to the States we decided to re-pick up wedding photography. Luckily, Will and I have opposite skill sets which I think has made the balance so great, but there are a few rules we try to implement to keep the balance:
(1) Trust each other’s instincts. When one of us has a bad feeling about something we both trust that instinct and do not try to press ahead, working for yourself exposes you to the full extent of the decisions that you make. If we do make a mistake, we try to learn from it and let it go — it is critical when working with your spouse not to hold onto grudges, I would say that this is something that we are really good at.
(2) Behave professionally. We’re less good at this. There is always room for improvement but in ‘work mode’ we have to leave everything else going on between us behind. It’s also been interesting to work with larger teams, and that helps us try to be more professional with one another.
(3) Set clear goals. Will and I are totally united in the fact that we want the same things; we are open about our goals and often revisit them. We wrote a ‘3 year plan’ in 2013 (an incredible exercise which I recommend to everybody). We came across it in a move nearly three years later and found it was surprisingly on point — a lot of it had come true. Visualization!
(4) Play to our strengths. We like to believe that we have very different but complimentary skill sets. We do not compete in the work that we do and we try to prop each other up as much as we can. xx
