IT'S OFFICIALLY BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE I WENT FULL TIME WITH MY SMALL WEDDING & BOUDOIR PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS!
THREE F*CKIN’ YEARS FULL-TIME!
I’ve officially been at this shindig & running this small business of mine full-time for 3 whole years now, y’all. It’s absolutely surreal. I can't believe my baby, Taylor Raye Photography, is 3 (which also happens to be my favorite number)!
I don’t know where the time has gone but I’m grateful to have lost track of it in such beautiful places, on your wedding days + each coffee shop & trip down a midwestern country road in between.
Waking up every day as my own boss is a privilege. Each day it happens, I am overflowing with so much gratitude that I often feel like it can't be contained - it's as if the appreciation and realization that this really is my life doesn't fit in my body; like it can't be embodied solely by my fingers and my toes and I'm just bursting at the seems.
It's something that so many of us desire, so many of us dream of, but statistically, few of us ever get the opportunity to experience in this life. That understanding & realization is big - it's HUGE. This mindset I carry through my days is just one of many reasons why I *know* that I can never, note even for a moment, take this little life for granted. I get to do something most of us only ever fantasize about. While I currently live out my life as a single woman in her late (like really late) 20s, the best way I've found to express this gratitude of mine is to lean into the freedom that comes with this lifestyle of curating my own schedule from day to day and year to year. Right now, that looks like traveling, saying "yes" to new experiences (and not just the experiences that seem so obviously joyful, but truly anything that is unexplored by my own eyes and/or anything that can offer a lesson that maybe I'm yet to obtain), taking risks, trying new flavors in new places and simply *living.* Like, really living.
This small business of mine has allowed me so many opportunities, from opening up my own studio in Goshen to curate a safe and inclusive space for vulnerability/boudoir within my own community to having a flexible schedule that allows me to show up for friends and family in times of need, like my parents countless doctors appointments in Grand Rapids, MI. I've been in awe of mountains, explored the streets of big cities that once seemed so far outside the realm of possibility and put my toes in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. At any given time, I'm hoping in my car to work from one coffee shop of the next, be it in Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Kalamazoo, Fort Wayne or Ann Arbor - I'm all over the midwest.
Anywho, I don’t think we celebrate our wins nearly enough, so please join me in pouring that 3rd cup of coffee, throwing back that tequila shot or indulging in literally any fruit smoothie with mango and share a toast with me to 3 full-time years and so many more of Taylor Raye Photography 🥂
Cake: Sweets by Bobbi on Facebook (based in Elkhart, IN and literally soooo damn yummy)
Photos: captured in my studio by Brick & Pine Photography & edited by mwah
