All About The Bride!

Today I was thinking... that it really is all about the bride! She is the princess. She is the one who has been dreaming about {this day} since playing house with her Barbie dolls. The groom? Its not really about him. Sorry guys! While the little girls are picking out their future brides maids and color schemes we were much more happy catching bullfrogs and tadpoles. Not much changes when little girls and little boys grow up into a bride and groom, except by this time... the girl has caught the boys eye and suddenly he finds something far more interesting to catch. Her beauty has won the little boys heart in a way that none else could compare.

And I was thinking, what is it about a brides grand entrance that makes us gasp for breath as she steps onto the aisle? Why do our eyes become wet with tears and our heart full of music? Its her beauty. It speaks of something more. something greater than bullfrogs and tadpoles.

This week I want to just focus a bit on the Bride. I got great shots of Chad and the groomsman with a beautiful ceremony set in the San Luis Mission, but Ive got to mix it up a bit and besides, Lindsey was such a stunning bride! She was at ease and playful in front of the camera because she confidently shared her beauty. She wasnt ashamed or reserved because she didnt withhold any of who she was, she was simply beautiful!

As I began to go through todays pictures I remembered a book I read to help me understand women a bit more (I will forever be trying). {Captivating} by John and Staci Eldredge really shines a light on the innate character and nature of women. From it I learned that women were made to be beautiful, that they were made to be a reflection of a facet of the very character of God. Hope you enjoy this excerpt and I hope you are able to appreciate just how beautiful Lindsey looked today and I hope that that appreciation can point you to something greater.

{Beauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. Think of what its like to behold a gorgeous sunset or the ocean at dawn. Remember the ending of a great story. We yearn to linger, to experience it all our days. Sometimes the beauty is so deep it pierces us with longing. For what? For life as it was meant to be. Beauty reminds us of an Eden we have never known, but somehow know our hearts were created for. Beauty speaks of heaven to come, when all shall be beautiful. It haunts us with eternity. Beauty says, There is a glory calling you. And if there is a glory, there is a source of glory. What great goodness could have possibly created this? Beauty draws us to God.

All these things are true for any experience of Beauty. But they are especially true when we experience the beauty of a woman ;her eyes, her form, her voice, her heart, her spirit, her life. She speaks all of this far more profoundly than anything else in all creation, because she is incarnate; she is personal. It flows to us from an immortal being. She is Beauty through and through.

Beauty is, without question, the most essential and most misunderstood of all Gods qualities; of all feminine qualities, too. We know it has caused untold pain in the lives of women. But even there something is speaking. Why so much heartache over beauty? Women dont ache over being geniuses, or fabulous hockey players. Women ache over the issue of beauty; they ache to be beautiful, to believe they are beautiful, and they worry over keeping it if ever they can find it.

A woman knows, down in her soul, that she longs to bring beauty to the world. She might be mistaken on how (something every woman struggles with), but she longs for a beauty to unveil. This is not just culture, or the need to {get a man}. This is in her heart, part of her design.}