Prior to Monday, I would have told you that I was nervous about speaking at Showit United 2013. My introverted self makes it a little challenging (ok, I lot challenging!) to be at the front of the room sharing a presentation. But, then David Jay said something in his opening session that pretty much rocked our worlds. He said something like this:

Anyone who is feeling nervous about speaking is coming at it from the totally wrong place. They are making it way too much about themselves and not recognizing that it is so much bigger than that!

Whoa! Yes, it stung just a bit. But it stung in the best possible way! It was the perfect reminder of what this opportunity was all about. We were blessed with the opportunity to share our heart and soul with a room full of talented people! It was NOT about us, it was about what we could share with everyone else!

After attending an afternoon panel on Monday at Showit United on a topic very similar to what we were sharing yesterday, Service, I found myself getting more fired up than ever. I still had those feelings that I once considered nerves, but I realized that it was so much more than that! I was fired up to have an opportunity to share our gifts in hopes that we could make a difference in the lives of others!! We were fired up!

Yesterday, we poured our hearts out to a room of new and old friends at the Showit United Conference about making your life about Love and Service. We shared a lot with every one in that room. And they turned around and shared so much more! They opened their hearts and encouraged us more than we could have ever imagined! We are so grateful.

The title of our session was “You are SO MUCH More Than a Photographer.” It is in our hearts to share a message of encouragement to always be in search of recognizing your gifts. We firmly believe that by combining your gifts with your passions, you have the power to change the world! Even though you may call yourself by a title of photographer or teacher or construction worker (whatever your “profession” may be)… YOU have so much more to share with the world than what you are limited to with that title! You have passions and you have gifts that are UNIQUE to you. You were given those gifts for a reason and it is your responsibility to utilize them to serve others! That’s what we believe anyway! ;)

We are definitely planning to share more from our session yesterday… including a very special webinar in the near future that shares the whole thing! ;). But, for now, we will share this Compendium video that we concluded the session with yesterday! It is the perfect reminder that YOU have so much to give! And you should probably go and do it! ;)

To everyone who was in that room yesterday… thank you for listening to our hearts and opening yours to support us in our dreams! We are so grateful for each of you and we can’t wait to see what you do with your passions and your gifts!! And to the whole Showit team… thank you for being an INCREDIBLE example of love and service! AND thank you for the opportunity to be a part of Showit United 2013! ;)

We interrupt the regularly (or irregularly, lately) scheduled program for this special news bulletin about Liz and Ryan! :)… First, we just have to apologize for the irregular part! We are learning a lot about travel and working and how wifi is not as regularly available as we had become used to in the comfort of home! Thank you for learning along with us and being patient as we get ourselves together! ;)

And now onto the new bulletin! ;)

Happy Tuesday friends! Over the past few weeks Liz and I have been discussing ways we can make our blog more useful to everyone who visits! As we have written about before, our passion is to help people live a more AMAZING life and have more AMAZING marriages! In addition, we love being able to document these AMAZING moments in peoples lives through our photography. In order to best serve you, our readers and friends, we have decided to develop a little plan that will (hopefully ;) ) create some consistency on our blog and make it a more enjoyable experience for you!

On Mondays, we are excited to start sharing posts with a theme of “AMAZING marriages.” In the AMAZING marriage posts, we will share experiences, both personal and from other couples that have taught us how to always choose love first to make our marriage amazing each and everyday!

Wednesdays will now be featuring posts about living an AMAZING life. Each day we are given is a gift and it should be celebrated! Life can be tough and we recognize that. Through the everyday stresses of life, we recognize that we always have the opportunity to choose happiness. Our good friend, Lauren Wakefield, summed it up best. “Sh*t happens, but we are still going to eat cupcakes!” The posts we share on Wednesdays will include things we do to make everyday moments just a little more AMAZING! Wednesdays will also be the days that include some of our favorite topics (Ryan Cooks, Liz’s DIY) and our AMAZING Life Manifesto videos too!

Friday is still a work in progress! One thing is for sure, we hope that after reading our Friday posts that you are inspired to have an AMAZING weekend. A few of the ideas we are currently hoping to include are recipes for Breakfast in Bed, Friday Favorites, the Liz and Ryan Book Club, ways to make Love and Service your way of life, and how to make big dreams happen.

Tuesdays and Thursdays will be dedicated to photography. We will be sharing our work from our most recent sessions on these days! I am also a little bit of a tech nerd, and as long as Liz lets me ( ;) ), I hope to start sharing a little bit more of my technical side and why I love photography!

We plan to consistently post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9:00 a.m EST. Our goal is also to post Tuesday and Thursday posts at 9:00 a.m. EST, but depending on how crazy the wedding season gets, you may have to forgive us a bit!

Can you tell we are Type A people?!? ;) We felt like we needed to create and share this little scheduled plan for all of our other Type A friends out there! ;) One of our favorite bloggers, Chris Guillebeau is always SO CONSISTENT with his blogging- and knowing that he will be posting on Monday and Thursdays definitely gets us even more excited for those days! We can only hope that you all will share that same excitement for our new and improved plan! ;)

As we begin to implement these changes, we would LOVE to hear from you all and what you would like to read about! If you have any ideas for posts, want to share ways you live an AMAZING marriage or AMAZING life, or would be interested in being featured as a guest blog post let us know! Either leave us a comment below or send us an email at hello@lizandryan.com. We can’t wait to hear from you! Thanks so much for reading! You all rock!

When Kevin contacted us last year about surprising his girlfriend, Jennifer, by asking us to be his proposal photographer when he proposed at the Jefferson Memorial, we literally jumped up and down. Seriously… picture Ryan checking the emails and saying, “That is so fun.” And then I say, “What, What is so fun?” And then I literally run over to Ryan and both of us hover around the computer reading Kevin’s email with a whole lot of excitement to follow!

Having a guy contact us about surprising his soon to be fiancé is magical to us! But having him ask us to be a part of it is even that much more magical! Not to mention, Kevin shared with us that Jennifer was a blog reader and the Maid of Honor in Allison and Tom’s wedding from a year and half ago! Ohh my goodness- yes we were super super pumped!

Photographing a proposal is always a little tricky… as much as we plan ahead of time, we are always a bit nervous. What if the timing doesn’t work out the way we had planned and we actually miss it because they arrived earlier than planned? Or what if the taxi driver knows a different entrance and drops them off there? Or what if the sun sets early?!? Haha! I know that’s not really possible. But if these are the thoughts going through my mind, I can only imagine the thoughts that were going through Kevin’s.

Kevin handled EVERYTHING so calmly and with so much joy! His “story” was that they were going to be attending an event at the Memorial. When they arrived to the Memorial and did not see the friends they were supposed to be meeting or any other sign of an event, Jennifer definitely had the look of concern on her face. But Kevin, without skipping a beat, just kept right on going. They made their way to the top of the stairs and Kevin got down on one knee. The rest of this amazing story can be seen in the photos! Words are hard to describe the pure joy, happiness, and AMAZING love that poured from their hearts! ;)

Congratulations Jennifer and Kevin! We are so honored to have captured this AMAZING moment in your love story!

Ryan and I have been chatting about our 2013 wedding photography season and getting SUPER excited because our couples are pretty much AMAZING! ;) They all exude an incredible amount of love and huge excitement about the most important thing… their marriage! We are so excited and so honored to be the ones photographing this incredible time in their lives!

Looking at our rapidly filling calendar for 2013, we have decided to only take 5 more weddings for this year! Only 5 remaining wedding openings are available for 2013! CRAZY! ;) We are feeling so blessed and truly grateful!

Over the past 4 years, we have recognized that our talents and our passions stem WAY beyond “just” documenting this special day in a couple’s lives. We recognize the beauty in all of our couple’s love stories and we see it as our responsibility to capture that joyful happiness and unconditional love as a documentation for generations to come… as well as a constant reminder to that couple of the AMAZING love that they share!

After documenting quite a few weddings ;) that have all been quite unique (local, international, ballroom, waterfront, small, huge) there has been one similarity that we have noticed that has allowed us to truly recognize the talents and passion we have to offer. When a wedding is not just a 6 hour event, but is truly a weekend long celebration that we are able to be a part of, we feel like we have the opportunity to really dive in and capture a love story beyond just the wedding day! By being present on more than just the wedding day, we are definitely more able to capture the truly authentic emotions and moments that are unique to our couples and tell their love story!

With just 5 remaining openings for 2013, we would love to fill those spots with weekend celebrations that are full of joyful happiness and unconditional love and are ready to be documented in a special way! We are looking for couples, to join the rest of our 2013 couples, who recognize the beauty in this AMAZINGly special moment in their lives and have chosen to plan their celebration in a way that maximizes their time with their family and friends while not minimizing the true reason they are all together to celebrate in the first place!

We have put together a special weekend wedding photography collection for the 5 remaining wedding openings for 2013! (Contact us for more details) If you are in need of someone to document your special celebration, or you know someone who is getting married and is looking for someone to document their love story, please pass along our information! And tell them to let us know you sent them our way! ;) We would be truly honored! (By the way… they do not have to be located in the Baltimore area. We LOVE to travel and are happy to chat about the specifics of that with the couple!)

Thank you for helping us utilize the special gifts we have been given to make the greatest impact on the lives of others! We are so grateful!

Below is an example of a weekend wedding photography love story we captured last October for Molly and Adil’s weekend celebration at the Combsberry Inn on the Eastern Shore in MD.  You can view more photos from their wedding weekend by clicking the links to follow:  The Cake, The Adarni Ceremony, The Rehearsal Festivities, The Wedding Day.

Through life-changing conversations (on a bus, over dinner in Dallas, on a floor at 3:00 a.m. in the Dominican Republic, you name the crazy location…. we probably had an AMAZING life chat there), listening to Mary share her heart about fear (and so much more) 10 times with the What’s Next Tour, attending the What If Conference, reading, and a whole lot of self reflection… we have had an AMAZING amount of clarity over the past few weeks!

When we first started our photography business and photographed our first wedding, we thought we were doing it because we LOVED taking photos and we LOVED being with couples on that crazy beautiful day of their lives. That is definitely true, but we realized a few years into it that there was a deeper meaning. (What Justin and Mary Marantz call “The Why.”) We were first introduced to this during the Spread The Love tour in San Francisco in 2011. At the time, we may have had an idea of what that Why was… but we were definitely not in a place to realize it. Over the past 2 years, we have grown a lot. Through conversations between Ryan and I… and then eventually close friends… we realized and were able to finally vocalize the real reason we are so incredibly passionate about what we do. It wasn’t until we sat on that bus on the last day of the tour and then again on the floor at 3:00 a.m. in the DR that I realized it was time to share that why.

7 1/2 years ago…

It was a warmer than usual fall day on campus at Bucknell. I had just completed an exam… where I remember feeling distracted. My head was not in it and I could feel in my gut that something was wrong. As soon as I got out of class and began my walk across campus to work in the Dean of Students Office, I received a call from my dad. He was a wreck. He could barely get words out. Immediately the tears began to flow from my eyes when I realized what was going on. Eventually, the words came out… “Your mom left. There is a note on the table that she is leaving and not coming back.”

As much as I didn’t want to believe it… I knew it was true. In the weeks leading up to my parents 25th wedding anniversary (just a few weeks before this fall day), something was different. The normal “best friend” relationship I had with my mom was distant. I had this feeling that something was going on… but I was the only one in our family to see it. I confronted my mom about it and she assured me that everything was fine. Obviously, it wasn’t.

That morning, with a hand-written note on the table, and no further communication with anyone, she walked out.

I remember making my way over to the Rooke Chapel on campus. I obviously was not in a state to go to work… and I just needed a place that was safe. I sat on the steps of the Chapel and just sobbed. As Ryan rubbed my shoulders and held me tight, the pain, anger, and frustration came out with every tear (pretty much like a waterfall! ;) ). Everything that I knew of marriage was just gone. Deleted… eliminated… stomped on. Divorce was always something that “happened to other families”… not mine. I was crushed in more ways than one!

It was hard. That experience of heartbreak was like nothing we had ever experienced before… and hope to never experience again. The past 7 1/2 years have been full of learning to forgive, building trust, and loving like no other! Although things are not always “picture perfect,” we are confident now more than ever that this was all part of God’s plan. He certainly does work in mysterious ways, but the clarity we have received (especially recently) has made us more grateful than ever!

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At the What If conference, we received some really honest feedback… criticism out of love if you will… That feedback came from a few people who said they just didn’t think we were sharing an authentic story on our blog. They felt like we were putting out this AMAZINGly happy message, but we were not having the impact that we could because we were not able to connect with people on a deeper level. The reality is, it wasn’t like we were trying to hide anything, we just have not been ready to share our story. There was a heck of a lot of personal processing- not to mention, a hard, but incredibly heartfelt and needed, conversation with my mom- that had to happen before I was in a place to fully recognize and share that the horribly dark time in our lives was actually the reason behind our passion! Let’s just say, it took me awhile to finally get to the point of actually saying Thank You to my parents for what they went through. Although crazy hard and a lot of hurt involved, we are grateful. (Honestly, that is still kind of hard to actually realize… but ohh so AMAZING!) I am excited to say… my mom and I had that conversation last week! ;) And it was more freeing than I ever could have imagined! (I think for both of us!)

“Without suffering, we do not have the opportunity to cultivate compassion and understanding; and without understanding, there can be no true love…Happiness is a function of compassion. If you do not have compassion in your heart, you do not have any happiness.” –Thich Nhat Hanh

Going through my parent’s divorce is the reason Ryan and I don’t see ourselves as “just” photographers, but as a couple in love who has a mission to help people recognize the love that they have in their lives is something incredibly special… and even though there are going to be hard times, choosing to live with joyful happiness, unconditional love, and authentic gratitude is the only way to fully live! We have realized that the experiences we have gone through in our lives (especially the hardest ones) and the love that we share has become incredible motivation and has sparked an AMAZING passion in our hearts! We are confident it is all a part of God’s plan and it is now our responsibility to do something with it!Last week we created The AMAZING Marriage Project. (Does everything make even more sense now?!?! ;) ) By studying, documenting, and sharing what makes the most AMAZING marriages work, we want to touch the lives of all couples! We have this crazy goal in our hearts of taking the divorce rate from 50% to 0%. CRAZY and Stupid (as our friend Richie would say in his new AMAZING book –The Power of Starting Something Stupid– that you all have to read… comes out March 5th, but you can pre-order here!), but the reality is that we can try. By sharing love, we do believe we have the ability to touch the lives of others one at a time… and if we can inspire just one person/couple who inspires another person/couple who inspires another person/couple… to choose joyful happiness, unconditional love, and authentic gratitude as their way of life, we might be on to something! You never know until you try! ;)

Thank you for letting us pour our hearts out on this blog and being there to help us navigate this incredibly AMAZING journey through life. Most especially to my Mom, Dad, and Brother (as well as the rest of our family and friends who have been a part of these past 7 1/2 years+) THANK YOU for EVERYTHING! We are so grateful for your listening ears, positive hearts, and incredible love!