"Operation Awesome Anniversary Gift
Let me begin by saying that I don’t do sexy. I don’t do slinky lingerie. I’m not super girlie, nor have I ever
been. I find myself in a nail salon
maybe once a year, and I can almost guarantee that I am never the one who
initiated the outing. I don’t show up
for work in sweats and no make-up (although if I thought I could get away with
it, it would be my uniform), but like most “young” mothers, there’s not much
time in my life to worry about what I look or feel like.
I have a full-time job that I love, I’ve been married to the
same great man for 10 years and we’ve created two beautiful children. It’s pretty much the American dream,
right? I do have an amazing life. But, like many women who are trying to keep up
with a demanding job, two young children who deserve much more of my time than
I have to give and a husband who gets what little attention I have left to give
(not to mention our home – we still have to take care of that, too), I often
feel exhausted and completely unattractive.
Enter the idea of a Roxy Boudoir session.
As my 10th wedding anniversary was approaching, I
knew I wanted to do something memorable for my husband, but I was completely
out of unique gift ideas. I had toyed
with the idea of booking a boudoir session before, but had never really taken
it seriously. Remember, I don’t do
sexy. By our 10th
anniversary, our daughter would be 5 and our son would be 8 months old, which means
my body was still recovering from pregnancy and a second c-section. To say it takes me a while to lose weight
after pregnancy is an understatement. My
5’4” frame does not take kindly to housing small humans for 9 months. So, like many women, I constantly fight the
ugly battle of accepting my body while it attempts to recover from going
through pure hell.
Despite all that, I finally felt brave enough to book my
session. I emailed Samantha and held my
breath as I waited for a response and confirmation. Then I freaked out. What would I wear? How would I pull this off? I had 3 weeks to lose 30 pounds!
The day of my boudoir shoot arrived (no, I hadn’t lost that
30 pounds) and I attempted to play it cool around my husband all morning. I carted the kids off to daycare and showed
up to my session sweating, with an overflowing bag of clothes, accessories and
shoes… late as usual. A calming
sensation came over me as soon as I walked into the studio and sank into the
makeup chair. I closed my eyes and let
Angelia begin to transform me. There was
great music streaming from the I-pod and easy conversation, and before I knew
it I was facing a different version of myself in the mirror.
I showed Samantha what I brought to wear and she
enthusiastically told me how great it was, and pretty soon we were off and
running. It was so much fun…and
easy! She made me feel like I was meant
to be in front of a camera, which is a feeling completely foreign to me. For the first time in months, maybe years, I
felt really beautiful… even sexy! I’m
not sure what I expected out of this session, but whatever it was, my
experience far exceeded it. As always,
Samantha was extremely professional and amazing to work with. I’d been completely embarrassed to book the
session and even more so to tell anyone I was doing it. I quickly realized there was nothing shameful
about boudoir photography. It felt
classy, romantic and fun. Somehow in
that one hour, I put to rest some of the body image issues I’ve been carrying
around with me for years. No, my body
isn’t perfect. But I can still feel
beautiful in it. I walked out of the
studio feeling empowered and wanting to shout to the world that every woman
should do herself a favor and have boudoir photos taken. I didn’t, of course, because I had to keep my
little secret for another two weeks.
Those weeks crawled by, as I anxiously waited to give the
hubs his gift. On the morning of our
anniversary, we headed out of town for the weekend. I was giddy with anticipation as the hours
ticked down until “the exchange”. He
knew I was excited for him to open his gift and it was driving him absolutely
crazy trying to figure out what I could have gotten him. When we checked in to the hotel, I couldn’t
wait any longer. I made him sit down and
start opening almost immediately.
I had pretty much anticipated the slow, questioning smile
that would creep across his face as it registered to him what he was looking
at. That all happened as I
imagined. Then his smile became huge –
really huge. He muttered the phrase,
“Shut the front door!” (only the less clean version) over and over for the
duration of the time it took him to look through the book (a couple
times). He LOVED it! I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction! Thank you, Samantha and Angelia, for my
temporary outer transformation and my more permanent inner transformation. I needed that.
Operation Awesome Anniversary Gift: SUCCESS!"
