One of my favorite holiday traditions that I’m largely responsible for each year is our Christmas card. To say I put a lot of thought and effort into it every year is an understatement. I’m a details girl and I also love all aspect of gift giving and written communication. Paper is my love language, you might say. (No, it’s actually gift-giving, but I’m getting sidetracked.) Where was I? Oh yes, our Christmas card.
This year, however, our Christmas card just wasn’t working out the way I’d hoped. This is it, right above this. It’s not bad by any stretch, but I treasure ours as a capstone to our year as a family and prefer it look a certain way year to year. I don’t have a formula necessarily but I do like one large family shot on the front. Let me start at the beginning though.
It started back in November, on our Disney trip. I’d gotten ahead of the chaos and booked a photo session at Disney with a Photopass photographer, a very handy and amazing service that isn’t widely known for casual Disney visitors. The same photographers you see in the parks capture groups of 10 in front of Cinderella’s castle will spend 20 minutes with you (and your party) shooting in a location of your choosing. It’s a popular option for high school photos, graduation pictures, couples, and families like ours who want a magical Disney family photo.
The problem was that we overscheduled ourselves early on in our trip and massively underestimated how both the awful, rainy weather we got the first weekend we were at Disney and the enormous challenge taking twin two-year old to the parks would be. By the time our full Magic Kingdom day arrived, I knew our family collectively needed a breather so I cancelled our “Capture Your Moment” Disney photo session reservation with a heavy heart, but I knew it was for the best. I reassured myself that I’d be able to capture a moment sometime on our trip when the stars would align for a group photo of the whole family with some magical decor behind us. Well, life had other plans.
Not only did this not happen, when I selected the card, I somehow neglected to clock the SIZE of it. Now, I’m very particular about the size of our Christmas card. We sent out a comically large card one year, much to my mortification, but tried to make light of it, including the following self-penned poem:
Our Christmas card,is rather large,
It’s really rather funny…
OK, that’s about all I remember of the poem, but suffice it to say, Brian and I laughed ourselves silly taping printed copies of that little poem to our card that year. Perfectly imperfect. So, on reflection, I don’t require a perfect card in the sense that it meets some silly standard, but I do like it to capture, oh, I don’t know, our true *spirit* as a family. I like a large, crisply printed, naturally, well-lit, outdoor shot, preferably taken on a “real” camera. Phew. OK, when I type it all out like that it sounds like I’m shooting for the moon. Perfection. But really it’s not that. I snap thousands of photos all year long. I’m the photographer behind the lens and our Christmas card is a chance to be together with those I love most.
Married with Style 