Last night was such an amazing night for me…so I am going to get a little long-winded and sappy here – sorry!  I don’t do this often – I promise!

Yesterday I celebrated two anniversaries!  First and foremost I celebrated the anniversary of marrying the love of my life (Te Amo Carino Mio)!  Then, last night was also the one year anniversary of Eco-Beautiful Weddings and we celebrated it at the Decatur House in Eco-Style –more about that here!  Both anniversaries on the same day was a little stupid of me – I know.  I did not originally plan to have the 1st day of the magazine go live back on 12/15/2009 – it just sorta happened.  So 12/15 will always be a big day for me!

But the photo above is what I want to talk about.  I think over the years I have lost touch with the fact of how much my mom adores me.  You can’t tell here – but she had tears in her eyes.  She looked at me and could see how happy I was and, in her words, I looked beautiful.  For those that know me, I don’t wear dresses often, but when I do – I like to go all out. This dress was custom-designed for me by Chris Kole of The Cotton Bride and I felt beautiful in it.   When my mom first saw me in the room, she said a few “proud momma” things and all of a sudden I was swept away back to when I was a little girl.

I remembered this one day when she was brushing my long brown hair and looked at me in the mirror and said “You are just so beautiful”.  My mom is such a wonderful lady and everyone had fun chatting with her at the event.

This year has been so amazing with many beautiful and fun clients from Elegance & Simplicity and the growth of Eco-Beautiful Weddings.  I really owe a lot of my success to my mom.  She always taught me to work hard.  It was not necessarily with anything she said, it was what she did.  She worked so hard when I was a child, but always found time to spend with me.  She still works hard and still comes out to party on a Wednesday night!

I love doing wedding planning and floral designs and I have been totally diggin’ being an Editor-in-Chief this year!  So the point of this post is? My mom and I will both tell you we don’t photograph well and Delores from a little bit of whimsy photography really took my breath away when she sent me this image yesterday!  This photo will always mean a lot to me as it was such a special night and it started by celebrating with my biggest cheerleader – my mom!

Love you mom!