Woo! It’s mid-November and it’s that time of year again for Autumn Family Portrait Sessions and Christmas Sessions-! This week we’re back with one of our favorite little families to share with you their latest Family Portrait Session (2021)! You may remember Bridget & Branden (and even Wrigley) from the past few years since we’ve been meeting up with and capturing them all since 2.5 years ago! Bridget & Branden finally had their wedding this Summer 2021 fully at Notre Dame (and the Morris Inn on campus) after deciding to reschedule their Summer 2020 wedding due to the Pandemic. We initially met these two in the Summer of 2019 in their old home of Chicago during a busy lunch rush downtown by both of their workplaces. Back then none of us could have ever foreseen what would happen in the world about 8 months later (Covid-19 shutdowns and all of that), so we excitedly chatted about their wedding plans and eventually set up their Engagement Session- luckily for Autumn 2019 rather than Spring 2020! **While we share more of their 2021 Autumn/ Christmas Portrait Session, we’ll tell more of the story from the past 2.5 years!
If you know them, you know that Bridget & Branden are always busy with friends, work, travel, and more! As a matter of fact, these two are heading to San Diego in just a couple days (work trip for Branden). That said, we all had an extremely, extremely hectic 2019 work and life schedule, so we captured these two for their Engagement Session about ONE week after we returned from photographing Kyla & Walt’s wedding at a villa in Tuscany, Italy (near Siena) AND one week after returning the next day just to photograph yet another full 10 hour wedding day 45 minutes south of us at a resort here in Indiana. With their busy schedule October 19th, 2019 happened to be the perfect day for them, so we drove in to Chicago to capture their Engagement Session (and may have made them pose for photos at their chosen locations for a handful of hours more than expected). Here’s a flashback to their Engagement Session: https://www.jennyandjasonphoto.com/blog/bridget-branden-sunrise-chicago-engagement-session-illinois
Branden drove us all around in his old car and they even gave us an amazing lunch suggestion for us to hit up by ourselves afterward since they then had to head off to their Bridal Shower-!! You truly can’t make up how busy times were that year-!
5 months after their Engagement Session in Chicago, the Pandemic lockdowns started for our city. Chicago’s followed about a week later and with all of the craziness happening in Chicago, these two decided to take their dog down to one of their parents’ homes in South Carolina to work remotely from their computers for a little while until things calmed down. We were a bit panicked, but were told that we legally could not photograph, so we frantically set to rescheduling many Spring Engagement Sessions and weddings. All of our couples decided that they would still do their big weddings and half decided to have a mini wedding in 2020 near or on their original date, push back a couple more times, then ultimately set their big wedding for late Summer 2021 due to the Pandemic. Bridget & Branden considered their options and wisely/ swiftly decided to push their wedding back a full year. This really helped them out as others scrambled to reschedule up to 3 or more times throughout the coming year!
Since many folks hired us to also photograph their mini weddings (at a deeply discounted 25% of a Portrait Session rate) we still got to see many of our 2020 wedding couples in 2020- albeit while we were all very masked up and in a totally different setting! We hadn’t seen Bridget and Branden yet since they decided to push their wedding back a full year, so we were thrilled to get to see these two last mid-November (one year ago!) for a little autumn Christmas Family Portrait Session over at Notre Dame-!
These two brought along their dog Wrigley for their Family Portrait Session last autumn 2020 too, so we were so thrilled to finally meet the famous Wrigley in person after hearing about her many times! Wrigley LOVES autumn leaves, so she was a huge fan of the one yellow tree on Notre Dame’s campus that we brought her to because she got to play with the crunchy leaves! We even got to photograph this little family last year in fun Christmas sweaters as evidenced here: https://www.jennyandjasonphoto.com/blog/chicago-christmas-portrait-session-with-puppy-wrigley
Fast-forward 8 months from their 2020 Christmas Portrait Session and it was finally time for their big full Notre Dame wedding day! Their big day less than 4 months ago went off without a hitch this year in 2021! We were so happy that these two finally got to celebrate their well-deserved big day with such a beautiful wedding with all of their friends and family in attendance. Here are the beautiful memories of that: https://www.jennyandjasonphoto.com/blog/bridget-branden-basilica-wedding-notre-dame-wedding-chicago
And that leads us to their Holiday Family Portrait Session that we captured for them just a few days ago this week-!! We were so excited to hear from Bridget and even more excited that they wanted another Holiday Portrait Session with Wrigley! They had been building their house this year just across the border of Illinois here in Indiana which is finally finished, so we suggested that we head there to capture the Portrait Session outside of their home. We captured some there of them on their awesome porch with their cute brand new porch Christmas trees (with their phone operated super cool porch lights) and then we headed out to capture some final ones by some lovely autumn foliage! Branden & Bridget happened to accidentally scout the perfect red trees just the day before, so we went there to capture their final photos (since our spots that were pre-scouted were a bust since many of their city’s leaves were struggling like ours had with very late green & brown leaves due to the unseasonably warm 80 degree days in mid-October).
We have been so honored to capture this little family over the past 2.5 years as they’ve grown and evolved. We’ve seen them adopt a pup, go from wonderful apartment in Chicago to beautiful homeownership in “Indiana’s Safest City,” have been around long enough to see car upgrades, have witnessed Branden’s insatiable love of Costco (and now like Jason- colored light bulbs, solar lights, and house items), got to hang out with Wrigley a couple times in this her first 1.5 years of life, got to document these two getting married (after a stressful Pandemic & rescheduling), and more! We couldn’t be happier for these two and are so thankful that we’ve been along for some important parts of the ride. Congratulations on your new house/ home, Wrigley, Bridget, and Branden! We wish you many more years of wedded bliss, coziness in your home, and hopefully expedited shipping on home items (it’s a Pandemic, but one can hope)-! Thank you so much for being such a stable light. We hope that our funny pups (especially Wrigley & Rizzo) get to play together here in Indiana someday when things potentially slow down for a second! Early Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels to California in a couple days!