A Solider & his Bride - Tampa Bay Wedding Photographer
I took these photos the week before Cassie & Lawrence's 2nd anniversary. It was a pretty big deal for me to do this; this amazing couple had to endure a most difficult first year of marriage --- they spent it an ocean apart. Lawrence received orders to Afghanistan 4 months after they married and in another 4 months, he was gone to another country, not to be reunited with his bride until a year later. I can't imagine what that must be like. I mean, I know what it's like to have a family member worlds away -- my dad would get stationed for a year or more at a time. First Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and then later in Korea. Back then, we only had telephones and snail mail. It was difficult trying to plan phone conversations between time zones.
But to be separated from your spouse? The one person you've vowed to spend the rest of your life with? It's just plain heart wrenching. Just last week, I was waiting in the emergency room, head in my hands, shaking, as I waited for them to bring my own husband back from getting a CT Scan. At risk for blood clots in the lungs, they said. Could be life threatening, they said. And then I was left alone, to figure all that out at 2:30 in the morning.
The emergency room is cold and uncomfortably bright. The idea of being left there, permanently, without the man I loved above all others, left me shocked and shivering.
But he came back, and although no blood clots were found, we're still in the process of trying to find out what's wrong, and in the process of living our lives bound even closer than we were before.
These photos are not only a tribute to how amazing Cassie and Lawrence are, but really a tribute to devotion and love and never giving up.
