Wives were created to be gardens, places of beauty and rest, rich with the fragrance of ripening fruit and blooming flowers, cool with shade and bubbling springs, mysterious, exotic, delights to their husbands’ souls. If you’re married, then you are your husband’s garden…(Andrea Parunak, A Garden Enclosed: The Importance of Modesty… and Immodesty)
Rina and I started offering “Celebrating Marriage” sessions a few years ago. And even though Rina and I have been working separately with most of our shoots lately, for these sessions we still come together as a team. We have been greatly enjoying creating these images . None of these pictures will go on our blog or portfolio. They are only for one person to enjoy- a gift from a wife to her husband.
A celebration of so much more then a woman’s appearance, these images are a celebration of her marriage as it ages and ripens and matures. I imagine a husband looking back on the “wife of his youth” and and smiling over the changes they have experienced together, physically and emotionally. I imagine an appreciation of each new line and wrinkle and curve as not only her body, but their marriage changes and develops over the years. I imagine a couple in their golden years, flipping through the pages of a secret but well worn photo album, smiling and laughing over the past, the present, and their imaginings of the future. She comments on how the years have affected her body, and he smiles and tells her how beautiful she is. I imagine him flipping to the back of the album, where the wrinkles and stretch marks reside and telling her “I like this best.” I imagine them putting the book away and wrapping their arms around each other and celebrating their bodies once more, remembering the past, thanking God for the present, and praying for the future.
Rejoice with the wife, of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
We are scheduling Celebrating Marriage sessions during the next several weeks, in order to complete them as gifts in time for Valentines Day. For more information please contact us.
Ella P. Photography 