Every year, at this time, the gyms are crowded with those of us who make a new resolution (well sometimes old resolution we renew every year) to work out and get fit.  The grocery aisles are filled with organization devices because we are determined this year will be the year we clear out minds and spaces from clutter.  Churches see higher attendance because we are convinced this is the year we will give up that one day of a week of sleeping in and be involved in church and have regular Sunday morning attendance.  One of these might be you or all of them might be you.  

Those who are business owners pick this time of year to focus on our goals, some times we even pick a word or phrase that mean something to us.  Maybe it's a technique we are determined to learn or that we are going to save money.  Either way we pick a word.  Last year my word was confidence.  I was going to go into the year more confident in my business being more intentional.  Up until last year, business was something that happened to me, but 2016 was the year I was going to tackle the business.  I made myself goals like booking three weddings for the year, booking three seniors, and a new family every month, and blogging more.  I just really wanted to focus more on my business.  The first week I scheduled three weddings, three seniors and a couple of new family shoots and boy, no one was more surprised that me that it would happen that quickly!  Talk about goals!  Except my word was confidence.  I had to sell me, my pricing and the importance of prints with CONFIDENCE!  I quickly stopped blogging and will admit that telling people the reason they should choose me was very difficult.  I don't like people who toot their own horn and I didn't want to be that gal!  So I bought very expensive software to assist me with sending out contracts and questionnaires and invoices!  (No more forgetting to ask for payment at the shoot!!). I was busier in my business than I ever thought possible.  2016 was an amazing year!

This year I have been slow about my goals and word.  I wondered how I could possibly do better with bookings than last year.  SO today I have started a new goal list that I will begin praying over.  (I pray over my goals because I want God to help me be intentional and I want Him to be the first to hear me.  I want God to know all credit of anything I am able to produce, do or be comes from HIM not me.)

This year my phrase is Love Story.  I want to be the storyteller through my images of your love story.  I'm not talking I am only shooting weddings and engagements.  I'm talking I want to sew together the fabric of your story and tell it so that generations from now your story will still have meaning and strength.  Your love stories are when you created a surprise birthday party for your mama's 80th and invited every friend seen and unseen in the last 30 years and bring them all together over bbq and cake.  I want to tell your story.  I want to tell the story of you caring for your child with cancer and how you fix pancakes in the morning and give him his meds and you wake up for the day with so much love in your heart that it shines on your face.  I want to tell your birth story so that every year on his or her birthday you can go back and remember every hand hold, nurse and doctor who helped with that day.  I want to tell the story of your baby turning one and how he is your little wild thing so we create a space that tells your story.  I want to be the one who tells the story of your love that keeps you awake at night every single night of your husbands deployment and up early in the morning to get your children to school because your husband depends on you to be strong while he is away.  I want to tell the story of your family sitting around the dinner table you had crafted with enough seating that all your children can bring their husbands and wives and children and ALWAYS have a seat at your table.  I want to tell the story of your family farm by photographing you with your family with all the hope of the future while standing in front of the old house of your past.  I want to enter your home and take pictures of the first week of your child's life or the last days with your pet.  I want to take pictures of you in a field of golden wheat in the sunset dancing with the man you love more today, than you did 20 years ago when you married him, while your children play around you.  These stories are your past and your future and I want to be the one to tell them.

Hollywood wants us to believe love begins when he asks you to marry him and pinnacles with a walk down the aisle but I want to capture all of it.  Real love begins and ends over and over again with the same man through so many years and I want to capture how the years change that love.  Hollywood tells you that the giant white wedding of your dreams is the only way you can be happy and while I want to capture that I also want to capture the couple at the courthouse getting married before the husband deploys or the couple getting married in their living room with family and a couple of friends watching.  If it's YOUR love story, I want to capture it!  Let this be the year of babies and weddings, of family sessions and surprise engagements!  Let me capture your seniors personality in swoon worthy gloss.  Let this be the year Mandy Chadwick Photography captures the joy you feel when you look at your crazy wild free and loving family.  2017 and all it's love stories are just waiting to be told!

Do you have an idea of a story you'd like told?  Do you know someone planning a tiny wedding or elopement?  I would love to speak with them!  IF you send them my way, you will get a special referral prize!!  Let's tell lot's of stories together this year!

So many love stories!!  I am ready!!

XOXO,

Mandy