We love date nights. Whether it’s dinner and a movie, or roaming around a mega store (see Part I), we know it’s important in any marriage or relationship, to set intentional time to be together. Our definition of a date is a loose one.. We just encourage you to be purposeful, joyful, and loving in your time together. This is our series to record our date nights and give you ideas and encouragement to continuously date each other.

To kick off our date night series, we thought it would be fun to flash back to our first “date”. If you don’t know our background, feel free to pop over to our “story of us” mini series where we introduce ourselves and our relationship to you.

At my bridal shower, my sister-in-law planned a little game of “newlyweds”. She had asked Michael a series of questions and tested me to see if our answers aligned. We were doing pretty well until she asked, “what was your first date”? For most, this would be an EASY one. But for Michael & I and our odd history, it was tricky. We didn’t really date. We just sort of fell together and couldn’t be pulled apart. I answered, going out for sushi (but Michael didn’t consider this a date because we were basically just friends catching up at that point..).

One of our big “whys” for this business of ours is that we want to encourage other couples. We want our couples’ marriages to be the ones that last forever. And aside from giving images that remind them of the time in their lives when they choose to pledge their lives to each other, we want to give them ways to strengthen their love long after that day and make it one for the history books. Now I know that is a big feat – a big dream for a little photography business. But we love marriage and we want our couples to LOVE their marriage. One way we try to do this, besides aiming to set an example in our own marriage, and giving our advice and the little bit of wisdom we have to our couples, is to encourage them to strengthen and WORK on their marriage in a daily sense. One thing that we know is super important to our own marriage, and something that countless statistics and research on what makes a good marriage supports, is the idea of date nights.