I’ve lived in Ottawa for fifteen years now.  It’s crazy when I think about it actually!  I moved here in September of 1997 to go to school and it’s so strange to think that nearly half of my life has been spent in this city!

But as far as hometowns go…I wasn’t raised here.  My childhood wasn’t spent here.  Instead, I grew up in a South Western part of the province…in London, Ontario.  A city that, in many ways, is very similar to Ottawa.

I remember how strange it was to go back there the first few times after having moved to Ottawa.  Something about it just looked so different…so much smaller.  My friends and I would go to the same places we had always gone, and yet, it was just…different.

Eventually, as the years went by, I began to return to London and have a certain affection for the place I had lived all those years.  I began to see it with a whole new set of eyes…eyes of nostalgia and comfort.  This was – after all – the place I called home for a very long time.  Now that I have children of my own, I can’t wait to take them back there and show them the places that meant so much to me growing up…the places that were my life before they became my life.  It’s important to have places to remember…

That’s why I love shooting couples in their hometowns…on the streets that they knew growing up.  I just love walking around and hearing all of their stories from childhood and adolescence.  I love being able to picture them at a different time in their life and then capture the life that they are about to embark on.  It just feels so much like being a part of the bigger story…a story that is taking a very romantic turn!

Lisa grew up here in Ottawa.  In these neighborhoods…near these same streets.  Jason – like me – grew up in South Western Ontario.  This summer, they are going to be getting married at a place that is all their own…a place that is just one part of Lisa and Jason’s story.  But on this day; this cold, wet, Spring day…the romance is being captured here…just one of the places that was Lisa’s life before her tall, handsome man became the other part of it!