Life is full of uncertainties, but some things are just a given. For me, it’s finding myself in this familiar place, looking at a screen blankly and thinking to myself “bloody hell, is it really that time of year again!?” Every year the end of season creeps up on me and the “best of” post lingers over us. We love looking back on the year, but it’s always a scary reminder of how fast the years seem to whizz by as you get older. At the time of writing, things haven’t quite finished up for us this year yet. We still have a newborn session to shoot and 3 more weddings. So we still have lots to look forward to!

2019 in summary

Personally: It hasn’t been one of our favourite years to be honest! It’s been a toughie. If you caught our “End of year” post from 2018 you may remember us mentioning that the sale of our house had fallen through during the later stages of the conveyancing process. For months we’d been planning a lovely Christmas in our new house- which may not sound like much, but we never usually make a thing of Christmas, so it was something really exciting. Things didn’t quite work out that way and Christmas was spent in limbo instead, still living out of the boxes we’d packed months previously.

Sadly, what followed wasn’t much better. Due to the instability of the market (thanks Brexit) and cautious lenders, our house sale and the associated purchases continued to fall through twice more before we were eventually able to move. When we did finally get in to our new house, it was only a couple of days before we realised we’d rushed in to buying a house that wasn’t right for us, just for some stability again. At face value we loved it, but we’d overlooked and compromised on too many things that just wouldn’t work for us long term. Within 2 weeks of completing on the sale and moving in, we were back on the market and hosting viewings. Stress is not the word.

2 house moves within 4 months

Thankfully, this time around it was plain sailing and the house was sold (STC) within a week. So before we were even half way through the year we were moving again for a second time. Now as a wedding photographer, you have pretty much zero spare time as it is May-September, so to be moving house in JULY was complete chaotic madness. But we got through it and somehow, here we are. Definitely a lot greyer up top than before the moving process all started though!

Personally, that is pretty much the entire story of our year. It’s funny how moving house takes over your entire lives. It really does feel like we’ve had no time for ourselves or to pursue anything else. Which is a real shame as you don’t get time back- but as I said last year, hopefully the next one is better.

Professionally: In amidst the chaos going on in the background, the one thing that’s given us consistency has been our weddings and our couples. There have been shed loads of incredible, memorable moments and I hope to share many new ones with you below. I’ve not been keeping our social media channels or blogs anywhere near as up to date as i’d like this year and that’s really niggled me. I am such a workaholic and I love being up to date, but even workaholics burn out. And this year I definitely burned out a little with non-essential admin. Every bit of spare energy has gone towards maintaining normality with our communication, shooting and editing processes.