This is Us: The Power Duo Behind-the-Cameras
If you’re reading this, before we continue, we want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for making it all the way over here. Like come on, anyone willing to read a little bit more about our story is a #truefan. And for that, we are sooo grateful because hello, we’re seriously darn lucky to have you.
From here on out, the one narrating this story is yours truly, Dani. I’m the one in the cute polka dot shirt right down here in the picture aka the cuter one of the two BUT SHHH DON’T TELL PABLO. Alrighty then, let’s begin!
…in a Starbucks in Kendall, Florida, sat two people who had NO idea what life was just about to thrust upon them. The year was 2015 (and we’re not sure what month because we don’t remember haha but we’ll say it was early 2015) and we were in the planning stages of what would become Colors of Grace. Back then just the idea of owning a company, heck just the idea of going to the bank to open a “company account” sounded like a lot. Now we know that opening a bank account is probably the easiest thing we’ve done in the business LOL.
This is us back in 2015:
Our dream was not complicated.
We wanted to join Pablo’s love for film and my love for photography and just create.
We learned that the wedding industry was in need of creatives and back then there weren’t all that many newcomers in the industry. We followed in the footsteps of our early teachers like White In Revery and Julia Cox and decided that we wanted to join our gifts and use them to document marriage. We weren’t married back then so honestly we had NO experience in the marriage department. All we knew was that there was a space for us to occupy and we were ready to occupy it.
The years from 2015 to 2017 were years of intense GROWTH. It was just the two of us and to be honest, we made so many mistakes back then, handled so many things incorrectly (we lost count already but the list goes on and on), and we were literally the definition of “ignorance is bliss” for entrepreneurs. No, I take that back - we were and to this day still are the definition of God’s GRACE shining upon entrepreneurs. Because man oh man did God have grace with us.
Back then, Pablo still had a full-time job, we BARELY had equipment (you guys now we have a whole CLOSET - like holy freaking wow), and we were not even paying ourselves a salary. Our jobs were paychecks of $500, $800, and we were all for it. We didn’t care, we just wanted to GET IN THERE and do it. We even had our very first office in my parents’ garage - the hot and heavy beginnings of CoG.
We like to say that back then we were just wee lil babies figuring it out but honestly we were fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who believed in us a lot…like a whole lot. Not only couples who trusted us with their important moments, but also other professionals in the industry that we were blessed to cross paths with early on. We had a community that propelled us and that’s not even counting our number one fans: our family.
And then, just like that, in 2017 we actually booked an ENTIREEEE year worth of weddings. Lemme hear you say AMEEEEN to that! So much so that we learned for the first time what having a “backlog” was lol from how overbooked we got.
Technically speaking, everything about us back then was so “unprofessional” compared to the eye, the colors, and the knowledge we have grown into developing over the years, but somehow…everything we created back then was just so honest, simple, and beautiful. We did not want to impress anyone but the couple themselves. Back then the focus was being artists on the wedding day, being the best we could for people, serving them instead of just selling a service.
2017 came and hit us in the face, pretty much. But thankfully by this time we had two AMAZING people jump on board this crazy train with us, our sidekicks, our CoG bffs, and our new forever friends, Briana (Pablo’s righthand for film) and Emily (my righthand for photo). And this was the year everything changed.
We got engaged AND married in 2017 and that led to a whole new side of our lives both personally and professionally. Now we could FINALLY say “hey we’re doing this marriage thing too” and not be totally uninformed at weddings haha.
And I so wish I could tell you that our fairy tale dream life came true right away but it didn’t. Marriage brought out ALL the real stuff from us personally and then some - the good, the bad, the challenges, the areas where growth needed to abound, the areas where we needed to admit we were not the best for each other but also embrace the ones where we were a perfect match. Marriage came to make us better - individually and as a couple.
So now, we have a whole new meaning as to why we stand for marriage. Because we believe in it, because the darn thing WORKS and it’s so worth it to fight through and pull through. Look I’ll be real with ya, the first two years were B-R-U-T-A-L in our case, but year 3 has been…amazing. And I’m not just saying that - we are truly reaping and enjoying the fruit from the hard work we put in for each other. We are more in love with one another than EVER before, enjoying the big and the little things in our life, and more excited than ever to see what God has in store for us for the next 50 years. Things are getting GOOD over here (minus COVID-19 - that did interrupt our 2020 plans lol). So now when you tell us “we’re ready to get married” we’re like :
Unfortunately, business-wise we lost control and we lost focus. We began worrying about “getting published” and “making it big” that in 2018 everything came to a halt. Completely. We began to question ourselves why we were doing this and if it was worth it to keep going because getting back up from the messy ground we had hit was not going to be easy. The company had taken over our lives, over the marriage, and we needed to decide how to move forward.
2018 was the year that we deleted our IG account (still crying over this a lil bit) and took a hiatus. It was this year that we decided we needed a fresh start. And that’s what we did. We gifted ourselves a fresh start.
SO HERE WE ARE NOWWW fresh and brand new, all shiny, and working on ourselves and our company like never before. We like to call 2019-2020 the years of REBUILDING - because that’s what they have been. They have been dedicated to rebuilding ourselves as people, to regaining perspective as artists and professionals, and to recommitting ourselves to serving as many people and couples as we can through our business and through our personal lives.
We have begun claiming our confidence back, taking charge of God’s gift to us through CoG, and we can DEFINITELY say we got like 5% cooler you guys. That’s a whole win right there haha.
We are brand new people, with a brand new polished vision.
2021 and on…well, we don’t know what’s coming up next but we ARE believing that God will continue to expand our territory, that He will bless our sweet lil company more and more and most importantly, that He will continue to use it to bless others. The more we surrender ourselves and our company in His hands, the farther He will take us. So we’re just here for the ride and apparently you are too <3
Can’t thank you enough for reading this brief excerpt of our life. It completely fills us up to know how much you care about us, where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed to. Thank you for being a part of us.
You seriously rock.
