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 have chosen—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 to that first wedding like a detective; I thought if I looked behind the scenes I would find some secret treasure at the wedding that would reveal to me what makes a marriage work. I know now that a lasting marriage isn’t made on a wedding day. It’s made in the quiet, ordinary days that follow—in the choosing. Not just once, in front of family and friends, but over and over again, in the unseen moments. 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 crowded room. In the choice to stay, to love, to 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 while the real work of marriage happens long after the wedding, the photographs remain. They hum a tune of promise and commitment, a quiet reminder of the day two people stood before each other and said, I choose you.

Photography has allowed me to be a small part of the remembering. My work can sit in the homes of the couples I serve, reminding them of the love they felt on the day they promised forever. Maybe, in some small way, my photographs help tether them back to those vows when life gets hard. Maybe they can become a reminder and an encouragement to keep choosing.

That’s what wedding photography is to me. A service. A preservation of something sacred. An honoring of love, not for the world to consume but for two people to hold close.

And that’s why I wrestle with the way social media has shaped this industry. Weddings are not advertisements. They are not content to be packaged and performed for likes. They are deeply personal, and incredibly holy. To take something so intimate and offer it up to be consumed by the masses—to turn it into a tool for self-promotion—feels wrong.

My work has never been about me. And yet, the industry tells me I must make it about me. It tells me to build a brand, use my voice, chase numbers, to turn my art into a performance. But I refuse. My rebellion isn’t the best business strategy. It’s not the formula for fast success. But love stories are not marketing material, and I will not reduce something sacred to a post designed for engagement.

Instead, I will quietly serve the couples who invite me into their lives. I will create, not to be seen, but to bear witness. I will preserve, not for applause, but for the people who will one day look at these photographs and remember why they chose each other in the first place.

And yet, I do share my work. I have to. That’s the reality of running a business in this world. But I don’t share for the reasons the industry tells me I should. Not to perform. Not to grow a following. Not to turn love into a marketing strategy.

I share because I believe in the weight of a photograph. Because somewhere out there, a couple is in the thick of life—the messy, ordinary, sometimes hard parts of marriage—and maybe seeing an image of their own love, frozen in time, is enough to pull them back to the promise they made.

I share because I want the people I serve to know their love is seen, honored, and worth remembering.

I share, not to be known, but so that the work I create can do the work it was meant to do—to remind, to ground, to hold steady.

So I post. Not for applause, not for approval, but as a quiet offering. A whisper in the noise. A simple way to say, This mattered. It still does.

I have become an artist. Not because I built a brand. Not because I followed a trend. But because I chose, again and again, to create with intention. To serve with honesty. To honor love the way I always intended to—not as something to be sold, but as something to be held sacred.

-Dana