If you weren’t aware of it at this point, The R2 Studio doubles as LGBT wedding photographers. Not only are we photographing same sex weddings but, news flash, we are a same sex couple. Ok, most of you received this news flash a long time ago or figured it out based on your own personal premonition. While we, obviously, fully support same sex weddings and have no problem photographing our LGBT community, we have never had a public ceremony for ourselves or our kids. Robin always thought it was a little funny being a Phoenix wedding photographer having never been married herself. And while I, Renee, had gotten married back in the mid 90’s, much of the wedding industry has changed since – fashion more than anything. Robin always pokes fun at me for my lacy, full sleeve gown that looked amazing in 1995 (really, it was awesome and it was winter time and the sleeves were legit!)

Robin and I have had frequent conversations on the topic…They went something like this….. Me: “Hey we should get married”, Robin: “Let’s wait until it’s legal”, Me: “But all of our R2 couples want us to be married,” Robin: “Have you seen how stressed out our couples are in the end? it’s always because it costs too much money,” Me: “We have the rest of our lives to pay it off…” Etc, etc… We are sure none of you have had similar conversations concerning the topic. In addition we both really would love to have our families there, and being that a large number of them have not been 100% supportive, we thought if we gave them more time they would “come around”.  All of this had been said-but recently I, (Renee), came up with the best reason ever! Robin & I were driving in the car and I mentioned to her the fact that we were getting older.  Okay, we are not THAT old, but 34 is old to us.  So my simple statement was “Do you really want to wait until its legal to get married?  We are just going to get older and older and uglier and more wrinkly. Our wedding photos will SUCK!” And that’s all I had to say, Robin was in!  Obviously being Phoenix wedding photographers ourselves, our photos are one of the most important things and we would like our 30 year old sexy selves documented and not our 40, 50, 60 year old selves.  Makes perfect sense right?

Robin had no excuses this time. What I said made sense to both of us. Game on! ….R2 is officially getting married!

As Phoenix wedding photographers and LGBT wedding photographers, we have decided to reverse our rolls. We will put down our cameras, dress up in wedding day attire, and officially and publicly (hopefully legally) join our family together.  For this reason, we are going to blog about our journey.

It’s quite crazy being on this side – seeing what each of our couples have gone through and experiencing this ride from beginning to end.  I, Renee, am a wedding Nazi & have almost all of our vendors booked – while Robin is annoyed that I show her dresses ALL day long on Pinterest….

We hope reading our story makes you learn, cry, think, and more importantly love freely as you follow us along in our journey! To read our original “coming out” post to our R2 family click HERE. Warning: if you don’t agree with love equality then just hit the X button now on your browser window. We plan on  sharing freely and openly for ourselves, and for ALL of you who have supported us from day 1! Let the journey begin…

Here is a sneak peek of our E-Sesh photos we had done by the amazing, and all too talented El Paso wedding photographer Dan Dalstra. He is amazingly talented and over the years has become a close friend. Above all, he is an LGBT friendly wedding photographer. We will be elaborating more about how we chose Dan as our photographer, which honestly, for us, was a piece of cake!

Until next time….

R & R