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This is going to be my first ever photography GIVEAWAY, and I am so excited about it! …and it is all in the celebration of L.O.V.E.
What is my number one favorite thing to photograph? Couples. Whether they’re getting engaged or have been married for years, love is a precious story that needs to be told. So in honor of my personal love story (*see below) I am holding a contest/giveaway. The winners will receive my top portrait package: a 2 hour photography session with a styled theme; 30 custom edited images; a private online gallery; a disc of 10 high resolution finished negatives; 20 (4×6) prints; (1) 10×20 Story board, (1) 11×14 Canvas Wrap – a $1000 value!
This brings us to the fabulous LOVE STORY GIVEAWAY and how to enter and WIN, WIN, WIN! If you know a couple that has a beautiful story with some unique character and history or if you yourself have a great one… tell me your LOVE story! Shout it from the rooftops! I will be selecting the winner based upon how inspirational, unique, and touching the love story is… I will let my heart and soul do the choosing (I’m a sucker for romance)
How to enter contest? Please send me:
a) photo of the couple
b) the love story
c) contact information (email, personal address, phone number, etc…)
d) … and last but not least why they (or you) most deserve the gift of the photo shoot
Please email me this information to info@marinkristine.com I will be making my decision by July 4th in honor of my love story (*see below). The winning couple will be photographed in the Solano, or Napa Valley area. *NOTE: I am happy to travel if expenses are paid. Also, there are no losers so don’t be shy to write… every submission will receive a $50 gift certificate towards a portrait session in celebration of their L.O.V.E. (so be sure to include that address of yours, so I can mail you your gift card). I am excited to hear all of your love stories and start working toward choosing that one lucky WINNER!
It seems like only yesterday that I was a young 18-year-old fresh out of high school living on my own and working toward those awesome aimless goals of mine. My occupation? Waitress. College? Nope. In a relationship? Probably. In fact, I was the type of girl who always had a guy. Even if I didn’t have a guy at that exact moment, there was always that “prospect” in my peripheral, and Dave (my soon-to-be-husband) was just that. He was my prospective boyfriend and the cute guy who made me laugh.
After working side-by-side at Outback Steakhouse for months, he worked up some courage and got the nerve to finally ask me out. That prospective boyfriend offically became the real deal.
[story break] To put a few things into perspective for my sweet readers… I was raised in a Christian home, with Christian values. My parents have been married for a little over 30 years, and I was raised to always respect the sanctity of marriage and *cough, cough* being intimate within marriage only.
4 months later, I was pregnant.
With lots of tears (on my end) our lives became a whirlwind, a blur, and all that lay ahead for our future was a bum-rush wedding. The plan? Keep everything very “hush-hush” and try to get married before any signs of pregnancy. The scheduled proposal happened at Christmas time, in a well-known San Francisco restaurant, announced live by a band, in front of all of his friends (friends that I hardly knew). I plastered a surprised expression on my face pretended to be SHOCKED by the proposal.
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The dress was purchased, venue (with deposit) chosen, bridesmaids, colors, cake, flowers, everything all hand-picked to perfection… We were going full steam ahead. That was, until I watched his face closely and witnessed “the fear” replace glances of love. Everything inside of me stopped, and my heart awakened to the disappointment of shattered dreams. I questioned the steps we were taking. I doubted his love, and I doubted my own.
With lots of tears (once again on my end) a courageous decision was made. We decided to wait until after the delivery. Once the baby was born, we thought life would come together, be more simplistic, and the confusion would pass…
So life continued on, and we found a little apartment for our growing family and my expanding belly. I suppose things were okay to begin with, being busy decorating for the new coming baby, but I never thought I would be living/pregnant with someone I hardly knew. With every kick and nudge from Kassidy the sleepless nights rolled in. Day in, and day out, Dave and I got to know one another and the ugly side of our personalities began to flourish. Selfish behaviors continued as if there was no “baby on its way,” and I became very dissatisfied with the direction my life was headed. We began to argue constantly about him going out with friends, living a single life, and what felt like abandoning me at home alone for hours on end.
I gave birth to Kassidy Anna Marie on August 8th, 2001.
It was hard and difficult, but I would say that being a mom is like being a duck in water. I knew what to do from the moment she came into the world, and I have been taking care of her little bootie ever since. But, the truth is, I always had a hard time accepting becoming a “mother.” I was young, independent, and just as selfish as Dave. I had soooo many passions and desires that I wanted fulfilled. I wanted more out of a man, out of life, and simply put: I wanted more than Dave. I wanted more passion. I wanted poetry and crazy love. I wanted to be adored, stare deeply into someone’s eyes, and be showered with words of love.
This yearning for “more” festered as I watched Dave look at his newborn daughter in a way that he never looked at me. I saw the adoration in his eyes as he gazed at her. Love was so freely given to her, and I envied that kind of love, period. So, I ended the engagement, resolving that he would never love me in the way that I needed love.
He moved out when Kassidy was 3 months old, and I started living MY life again.
To be honest, it was all about me. I had custody of Kassidy for 4 days, he had her for 3 days. And, when he had her, I was single. I was free again, and I was painting the town red. I went out with an old boyfriend a few times, but more importantly, I met new ones. And, oh my! How I could go on and write novels about my “wind swept” romances. Oh, yes! I got the romance that I sooooo longed for. The adoration that I envied, but as I would soon discover… when one flies so high on the wings of passion, the fall is utterly disastrous.
My heart was eventually crushed. I wasted years of my life investing in a lie that I defined as love.
And so… after picking up the remains of my broken heart, I fulfilled a promise that I previously made to myself and to God years before. I became single. Yes, officially a single mom. No man. No “prospective boyfriend.” I kept my eyes solely on God, my heart, my hurt, and the mess inside of me that needed to be cleaned up by Christ. I was tired of running into another man’s arms, only for the passion and lust to be a temporary fix and short lived high. Love was my drug. I thought that it would satisfy every longing and craving within my soul.
I am not going to lie. It was a hard decision, and I cried a lot. A LOT! I was pretty much a pathetic mess, because all I wanted to do was run back into the arms of my “wind-swept” romantic love. I wanted to forgive my ex-boyfriend, forget all the wrongs, and just be adored again! But, I can’t reiterate enough, that it was a lie. I had to tell myself that daily to just get through the week, and every week felt like a month. Honestly, if I didn’t have the shoulder of my best friend to lean on, and if I didn’t have her strength and prayers to hold me up, I would have never made it through and become the woman that I am today. I am so grateful for who she was to me.
Time passed, and a year trickled by (my goal was to be single for 2 years, and dedicate myself to God). It was about that time that Dave started attending church – the same church I was going to. He had a girlfriend and was living life in the “fast lane” just like I was a year before. He was testing out hearts and breaking them along the way.
[story break] To put things into perspective for my sweet readers… I pushed Dave away, and kept him out of my life for 7 years. I am talking about, when he showed up at my door to drop off Kassidy – I smiled, said thank you, and pretty much slammed the door in his face. (yeah, I was super nice!) And it’s not because I was necessarily angry with him, I was just guarding my heart from getting into a relationship with him again. He was the last person on earth I wanted to be with. He had every quality that I didn’t want in a man. He was too nice, yet self-absorbed. He was simple, unromantic, clumsy, confusing, and always 3 steps behind me. My pride and independence just couldn’t handle being with a man like that… but something BIG was starting to change inside of him and inside of me.
One night I had a dream. It was something so simple I might have never noticed it before. It was one of those dreams that you have right before you wake up, and because it is fresh in your mind you completely remember it…. well, I dreamt of Dave (which I NEVER dreamt about Dave). We were driving to my apartment in his car, and I reached over and took ahold his hand. I looked at him and placed my head on his shoulder. In that moment I felt peace flood over me. It felt so right. I felt a sweet love fill up my heart, like a best friend kind of love… and then, I woke up. “WHOA! What the heck was that? I don’t care about Dave like that! I don’t love him… [pause] or do I?” Because I was trying to be sensitive to God’s will, plan, and future for my life, I mentioned to God that I would need a few things to change. First: my heart would have to morph – become tender and soft, falling in love with him all over again (which seemed impossible). Then second: Dave would have to be man enough to truly prove to me that I was the one that he wanted, and pursue my heart with an unrelenting consistency (which was another impossible feat). Well, it just so happens that GOD, my Jesus, is a God of the impossible and making miracles happen.
The next day, I needed some help moving a couch from my apartment into storage, and of course… Dave was always near. He was kinda the ‘man in my life’ when I needed a muscle or two lugging heavy stuff around. So, being the sweet wonderful girl that I am, I asked him for some help. He came over, and we both hauled it away in his brother’s truck. Afterwards, we grabbed a bite to eat at Strings Italian Cafe – my treat. (It was at this moment when everything began to change). Here I am, the annoying loud girl that I am, always prying into others lives (specifically Dave’s) and asking him about his girlfriend of the moment, “So, is she the one? Are you gonna marry her? Because, if you are not, you shouldn’t be leading her on or messing around with her heart. Soooo…. is she the one?” He started wiggling in his seat, getting all uncomfortable (as usual, he doesn’t really like to talk about things). He didn’t know. He didn’t have an answer. It figures, I think to myself, Dave never opens up about anything.”MARIN! I don’t have to tell you everything about my life, okay?” I just stared blankly at him. Wow. Gotcha Dave, whew, I was just asking if she was the one for you. GOSH! So, I changed the subject and started going on about something else for another 30 minutes. Then, all of a sudden out of left field, while I was still in mid-sentence, Dave just blurts out, “Marin, I just don’t love her the way that I loved you. I don’t think that I am going to marry her.” I kept looking down at my plate, uncomfortable with this new found declaration of love, and boldness… Ummmmmm, “Okay,” I said quietly under my breath. I probably brought up another topic trying to ignore this truly ackward moment, and I have got to say, I was really good at ignoring him
After this dinner, we got back to my apartment. I said thank you, and we were making our traditional parting statements. We gave one another a hug goodbye like always (we were always cordial and nice to one another). BUT… this hug was not the “normal” hug. We both held onto one another a little longer, letting the hug linger as he whispered in my ear “I care about you Marin, I always have.” [pause] My heart was filling up with warm feelings, “I care about you too Dave”. We pulled away and smiled at each other. He walked back to his car, and I heavily walked up my apartment steps in a daze. My head was swimming with questions, and tears began to flood my eyes. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH MY LIFE!?!?!?! What the heck is happening? First a dream, and then Dave saying all of this stuff? What is this? I locked myself in the house and did what any normal girl would do, started crying.
That night, I got a phone call. Dave was on the other end blubbering on about stuff that didn’t make any sense to me. I decided to just sit there, be patient, and hear him out. He was (in his own way) telling me that he still loved me, that he has never gotten over me, and no other girl had compared. He wanted to be with me. I shared with Dave the weirdness of my heart changing and warming up to his approaches (which to him was like “Dumb and Dumber” sooooo? Your sayin’ I’ve got a chance!!!) In all of the excitement of the moment, I warned Dave that there was no guarantee that this would work between us, that he definitely had to end his relationship with his girlfriend, and that he had to wait another year while I finished out my “2 years” with God.
Dave immediately broke up with his girlfriend and sat around for a year… waiting, writing love letters, sending flowers, and waiting some more.
It was officially on the 4th of July that my 2 year commitment to God ended, and Dave and I went out on our first date (again). Butterflies were fluttering in both of our stomachs, and the excited smiles could not leave our faces. We traveled by boat into San Francisco to watch the fireworks, walk around pier 39, and just stare romantically at one another. The smell of fish was in the air as we shared ‘clam chowder in a bread bowl’ walking along the freezing Bay. He timidly asked to hold my hand, and I nervously let him (pretty nice of me huh?) As the sun set he wrapped his arms around me, snuggled in close to my ear, and with warm breath on my neck we watched a myriad of colors burst forth in the evening sky. We had a good time. In fact, it was a great time. Sweet, romantic, and new. From the 4th of July – to October 11th (the day Dave proposed) God proved true to his promise and molded both of our hearts and lives into something new. What was dead between us, was fanned back into flame through the love of God.