I posted on Instagram a few days ago about the importance of our dining room table. It’s almost been a whole year since Stephen and I first purchased on home back in June. I remember holding the keys for the first time. The sheer excitement of seeing God show up in big ways and provide this amazing home for us! The table is the first thing you see upon entering our home. It's our focal point of our entry room and I thought that today, it deserved a little blog love.

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Way before every purchasing our home, we had big dreams for it. More than anything, we dreamed of having people over. Sharing life together. We began looking at this space that would soon be ours and started thinking about how we would be furnishing it. We were transitioning from a tiny one bedroom back-unit house into something with much more room for the two of us! When we were in escrow, we started carefully browsing the internet and local furniture stores for inspiration and ideas. We just so happened to be at Pier One here in town and saw this beautiful long table. It seemed perfect. We half-measured and eye balled the space and were determined it would fit. The real draw for us was that it was marked down almost 50% off because of a minor scratch on one side of the top table part. Something not even Stephen or I could notice. We purchased it! We acquired the first piece of new furniture for our home that we would soon be living in, it was so exciting!

Tables hold so much meaning to me. Growing up, almost every night of the week, my family would sit around my family's kitchen table and share a meal together. It was around that table that my dad would tell us about his work day and we as kids would eagerly tell him about all the activities we were doing. It was because of spending time around that table I learned the importance of hospitality and stepping out to hear people’s story.

Back to today, Stephen and I have a very similar table experience. This table is a place we sit around with our friends. It’s also the place we invite our couples (and potential future couples) to sit down and meet one another for the first time.

Stephen and I believe that true authentic relationships really matter in life. Because we value these relationships, we open our home to all our couples. This is usually the first place we’re meeting with a potential bride and groom and hearing about their wedding day. In the past, we met at coffee shops around town. Since having our own space however, nothing has compared to having our couples over here. Meeting face to face with our couples is so important and really helps us get to know them better before their wedding day. We truly value the people we have over, hearing the vision of their wedding day, and the relationship that forms throughout this process. When the wedding rolls around, we feel more like friends than vendors, and that is just the best.

Wedding photos and videos are so important, but for us, the people within those frames always come first!