The one about the product I created before I knew I had a business

It was the summer of 2020 and our first wedding anniversary was approaching - September 14. I started researching “best anniversary gifts for first year”, “first year anniversary ideas”, “anniversary gifts for spouse” and a couple scrolling hours later (may I add this was pre-baby), I came across a list of anniversary gifts by year. Low and behold there’s already a list to guide you along the way - amazing!


I scroll to year one and the theme is “paper”... upon first thought I cringe. “What do you mean paper”… a homemade card, a paper mache sculpture of your spouse. I think the neighbours at the next street over could see my eye roll.


After a few days of thinking about it, the lightbulb went off. I would create something digitally and then print it - there’s the paper! We had oodles of photos from our wedding day across our home but nothing that showcased some of the raw details like our wedding song. 


Our song was “Look at me” by Alan Jackson. It’s not a typical wedding song but it was our song dating back to the early days of our relationship. I can remember coming home late from a night out with some friends and we danced to this song in the middle of our kitchen. From that moment it was our song and ironically, on the night we got engaged we saw Alan Jackson live for the first time. It was an intimate show in Nashville with only a couple hundred people and although he didn’t play our song, it was an amazing night. 


So I took the lyrics from our song and laid them across a photo of us dancing our first dance as husband and wife. My husband so keenly dipped and kissed me and our photographer got this truly magical shot. Now I might add, when I say keenly I mean spontaneous, unpracticed and could have gone south fast. 


I ordered a frame from Amazon, printed off the wedding song art and gave it to my husband for our first anniversary. It lived on our dresser for many months, but it wasn’t until I hung it alongside my wedding vow art that I realized I actually started making products months before I had even formed the thought of a business. 


From there I went back to the computer, gave my original wedding song print a face lift and here you have the song art that now lives in our shop. The wedding song print is $35 and as always, includes free shipping in Canada. The 12X16 card stock wedding print is customized with your wedding song name, wedding song lyrics, wedding date and a photo of your first dance. Check it out in our wedding collection!

In one of my ‘ah-ha’ moments, I emptied the jar of blooms on a blank sheet of paper and arranged each piece carefully across the page

Laura Goulding