The best gift to a new mother to celebrate all that her body has done for her
Boudoir has always been about so much more than beautiful photos for us. Our clients come in for so many different reasons. Sometimes it’s a gift for their partner, sometimes it’s something they’ve wanted to do for themselves, and sometimes it’s because they’re in a season of life where they want to reconnect with themselves and the body they’ve spent so much time criticizing.
In 2020, we had seen firsthand what these sessions could mean to our clients and we wanted to give that experience to someone who really needed it.
Our 2020 Boudoir Giveaway
We decided to give away a complete boudoir experience and asked women to tell us why having a session would be important to them.
We had over a thousand entries, and we read every single one.
Eventually we narrowed it down, but even then we couldn’t choose. The women all had completely different backgrounds and stories, and each one had a reason that hit our hearts in a different way. There was no way we could sit there and decide that one woman’s story deserved this experience more than another.
So we went live and selected our boudoir giveaway winner!
We put the names in a hat, went live and drew our winner.
Her name was Valerie.
At the time, we thought we were about to give her an experience that could change the way she saw herself.
We had no idea that her photoshoot would end up changing the way we looked at boudoir and motherhood too.
And strangely enough, it would lead us to newborn and breastfeeding photography.
We went live and selected our boudoir winner!
We thought we were giving her a life changing experience but her photoshoot completely changed our perspective on not only boudoir but newborn photoshoots.
The photoshoot didn’t go quite as planned
When Valerie originally entered our giveaway, she was pregnant. She wanted to do a boudoir photoshoot as a way of reminding herself how beautiful her body was while it was doing something pretty incredible – growing her little boy.
But, as 2020 seemed to teach all of us, plans change.
Her session had to be pushed back and by the time we were finally able to photograph Valerie, her son was three months old.
We could have simply gone back to the boudoir session we originally planned, but the entire reason Valerie wanted to do this in the first place was to honor her body during this huge change in her life.
And now her body was doing something different.
It wasn’t growing her little boy anymore. It was feeding him.
So the idea for her photoshoot changed too.
Our boudoir giveaway winner did a breastfeeding photoshoot instead
From the time Valerie won the giveaway to the time we finally photographed her with her 3 month old son we stayed in regular contact planning a photoshoot that still revolved around the original idea of loving your body as a new mother.
We hear from new moms all the time who are struggling with how much their bodies have changed after having a baby. Getting to know Valerie though we loved how much she honored her body for the life it created and how much love she had for her little boy. It made perfect sense to bring all of that together into one beautiful photoshoot.
Reconnecting with her body through boudoir was already such a beautiful idea. Bringing her baby into it allowed us to photograph everything her body had done and was still doing for him.
There was something incredibly intimate about photographing Valerie breastfeeding her little boy. It’s something that happens every day and probably doesn’t feel extraordinary while you’re in the middle of it. But it’s also something that only exists for such a short period of their lives.
Seeing the two of them together and being able to capture that connection stuck with us long after her photoshoot was over.
We thought we were creating something special specifically for Valerie. Instead she showed us something we hadn’t really thought about before. These everyday moments between a mother and her baby deserve to be photographed too.
It’s why after Valerie’s session we started recommending breastfeeding portraits to our new moms. Not because every newborn photoshoot needs them but because if breastfeeding is an important part of your relationship with your baby right now this is a part of your story you may be incredibly grateful to have someday.
Our winner received a boudoir photoshoot with hair and makeup included from the wonderful Las Vegas Makeup Girl and a custom 12×12 Italian album, along with her high res photos and 2 prints
Today our studio is located in Central Kentucky where we photograph every season of motherhood from maternity and newborn portraits to breastfeeding and motherhood sessions. We would love to create something that celebrates this part of your story too.
