I became a wedding photographer for the hope of it.

My parents divorced when I was three. I don’t have any memories of them together. All I’ve ever known of their marriage is what comes after two people choose not to keep choosing each other.

And yet, I’ve always believed in love.

I was seventeen when I photographed my first wedding. I showed up with a camera and a quiet question in my heart. I thought maybe, if I looked closely enough, I’d find something hidden behind the scenes. Some kind of secret about what makes a marriage last.

I didn’t find a clear answer that day. But I did begin to understand this: a strong marriage isn’t built on a wedding day. It’s built in the quiet, ordinary days that follow. In the daily choosing. In the way hands reach for each other in the dark. In the whispered apologies. In the laughter at the kitchen sink. In the knowing looks across a room. In the choice to stay and keep building a life together, even when it’s hard.

Maybe that’s why I feel such a deep sense of purpose in what I do.

Because even though the real work of love happens long after the last dance, the photographs remain. They become a tether to that moment when two people looked at each other and said, I choose you.

Photography has allowed me to be part of the remembering. My images live in the homes of the couples I’ve served, reminding them of what they promised, of what they felt, of what they still have. And maybe, in some small way, they help people keep choosing each other when life gets messy.

That’s what wedding photography is to me. Not a performance. Not content. But a service. A preservation of something sacred.

Like my daughter, who paints a picture just for me and lights up when I frame it. She’s not looking for applause. She creates because it brings her joy to give something meaningful. I think I’ve always made my art that way too.

Sometimes my work looks like composing a quiet, perfect frame. Sometimes it looks like buckling a shoe. Fixing a flyaway. Whispering a steadying word. My art lives in the way I make people feel safe on a day that feels big and vulnerable. It’s in helping them feel at home. Helping them slow down. Helping them soak it all in.

To close their eyes. To breathe. To laugh longer. To dance, and kiss, and remember.

This work has never been about me. And yet, I feel the tension the industry creates. The push to brand, to perform, to turn sacred stories into strategy. But love is not a product. A wedding is not a campaign.

So I quietly resist.

I create, not to be seen, but to bear witness. I preserve, not for applause, but for the two people who will one day look at their photographs and remember why they chose each other in the first place.

And yes, I share my work. That’s part of doing this in the world we live in. But I don’t share for attention. I share because I believe in what a photograph can carry. Because maybe someone, somewhere, is in the thick of real life, and seeing their love reflected back to them is enough to bring them back to their promise.

I share so the people I serve know their love is seen. Honored. Worth remembering.

Not to be known, but so the work can do what it was made to do. To remind. To ground. To hold steady.

This is what I’ve come to believe. I didn’t become an artist because I followed a formula. I became an artist because I chose, again and again, to create with intention. To serve with honesty. To honor love as something to be held sacred.

And maybe that was the answer I was searching for all along.

-Dana