Giving Thanks to God!
This year has been the craziest and most amazing year of our LIVES! What a better way to reflect back on the past 365 days than by creating our top 10 highlights of 2017? God has blessed us 10 fold with our marriage, new friends, family, travel, a new home, SIGHT!, you name it! We couldn’t be more thankful and it is so fun to look back at the people who have made 2017 the best year yet!
1. Our Costola Brides and Grooms
In 2017, we introduced 34 new #CostolaCouples! We had weddings every single month this year, and a whopping SEVEN WEDDINGS in just October alone! Although we got a little tired sometimes, it was more than worth being able to be apart of each and every one of these couple’s wedding day, including destination weddings in Charleston, South Carolina and Corolla, North Carolina! It is always SUCH an honor to be chosen as a couple’s wedding photographer. This is NEVER taken lightly and we always strive to go above and beyond for every single one of them! Some of them we can now even call them our good friends! This is our DREAM job and we would never have been able to do it without the support and love from our couples!
2. Our Portrait Family
We accepted over FORTY families, couples, and seniors into our portrait family this year! Some, we have even seen multiple times this year! It’s always amazing to watch people who we have never met before trust us to capture such a special chapter in their lives. We have photographed graduations, new homes, new babies, promotions, holidays, and we get to be a part of all of it because you ask us to be! We even had a couple trust us to fly to NAPA to take their anniversary photos! Praise God!!
3. Our Travels
It’s no surprise that we love to travel, but we never thought in our wildest dreams that this career of ours would lead us to travel to places like…
Las Vegas, Nevada
Arizona
Utah
Iceland
Lake Raystown, Pennsylvania
Richmond, Virginia
New York, New York
Bryson City, North Carolina
Pinehurst, North Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Corolla, North Carolina
Napa, California
Portland, Oregon
And there are so many more coming next year!! Here are a few of our favorite photos from our travels this year!
4. Celebrating Our First Year of Marriage
We can’t believe that a year has flown by already!! Our first year of marriage was completely blessed by new friendships, fun times with our family and each other, a lot of hard work, our couples, our portrait families, new investments, closing doors and opening new ones.. we could go on and on. This year has taught us about communication, forgiveness, learning what pushes each other’s buttons, not killing each other when we push those buttons, how to love one another well in the way that we need to be loved, when to slow down, when to put God first (we still struggle with this daily with the craziness of life!), and how to know when we need some extra attention for each other.
5. Adopting Vincent
We can’t even imagine what life was like BEFORE Vincent! Watching him grow and become a healthy little pup has been the biggest blessing! He started out so tiny and frail, just had his leg amputated, and somehow, his personality was just as sweet as pie (towards us, towards the other dogs is another story). He makes us laugh so hard and follows his big brother, DaVinci, around like he’s his shadow! It’s the cutest thing!
6. Making Our First Promo Video
Making a promo video for our website had been a goal of ours since we first started Costola. We wanted to have a way in 2017 that we could speak to our future couples and families that was more than just words on our website. Thankfully, we knew that Josh would ROCK our promo video and Paige and Richie let us use their gorgeous home (and model for us!) to make sure that we accurately told our story!
7. Getting Lasik & Accutane
This one is just for myself. I had had terrible vision since I was extremely young and being able to have Lasik surgery and SEE without glasses or contacts was an extremely emotional experience that has changed my life! I am currently also on Accutane which has cleared my TERRIBLE acne that I have fought with since I was 13! There will definitely be a post coming up in March after I have taken my last dose!
8. Selling Our First Home
We sold our first home that we lived in together! Tony had bought this house when he was in his early 20’s, determined to flip it – Chip Gaines style! And boy did he succeed! I still can’t believe how much hard work he put into this home, and now we are living back in country where I grew up, next to my family!
9. Watching Our Friends and Family Succeed!
From having babies to job promotions, it has been amazing to watch our friends and family grow within their own lives in 2017. We have had our closest friends become pregnant, have babies, get married, start their businesses, travel the world, and grow closer to God. There is nothing more fulfilling than witnessing God work in those closest to your own heart!
10. Watching God Work
Through all of the ups and downs this year, there is one thing for certain – we have seen God work in miraculous ways. None of this would be genuine and true if it weren’t for HIM. Through the course of life, we all have opportunities to take the credit for ourselves when we shouldn’t. In the spotlight of some success, it’s tempting to keep the applause focused on “me.” But when you think about it, we would have no success in our lives at all if God did not see fit to give us the opportunities to succeed, the brainpower, the education, the temperament and gifts to accomplish praiseworthy things. And we are SO SO THANKFUL!!
Andie
Loved reading your recap of 2017. You are so very talented. I wish you much success and happiness in the years to come.
~ Beth