Today we’d like to introduce you to Wil and Paige Ramsey.
Wil and Paige, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We got married in 2008 and moved to Kansas in 2009 for Wil to be a Youth Pastor. Paige took photos of everything going on in our move and our new life and posted them online. People began asking Paige how much she would charge to take their senior portraits, or their engagement pictures, or pictures of their baby. Eventually Paige started photographing weddings on the side and that slowly grew until it was taking a lot of time, but wasn’t really making a lot of money. It was still just a hobby.
In 2014 we moved back to Houston and Wil took over running the business full-time while Paige taught High School Spanish. In 2017, Paige quit her job (though she went back to teaching part time just because she loves teaching) and we both photograph weddings and Paige takes senior portraits.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
We’ve been really lucky in that our clients have always been great and kind. We’re also blessed to get to work together everyday. We’ve been married 12 years and worked together full time for six and its the best. One thing we’ve both always struggled with is doubt. Wil is a philosophy major and Paige is a Spanish major and running a business is not really what we thought we’d be doing. We still sometimes feel weird running a really people focused business and having to make financial decisions when we’re both sorta bookish nerds. We both love to learn about new things and the internet has been an amazing resource for learning about marketing, accounting, SEO, and photography.
We’ve also often struggled with drawing the line between home and work. Our office is right off of our living room (it was in our bedroom for three years) and we can hear our children playing while we try to work. But working from home and working with one another has been a net positive for us, and as everyone has had to transition into working from home during COVID-19, I think a lot of people can relate to that.
Please tell us more about your work. What do you guys do? What do you specialize in? What sets you apart from competition?
The simplest version of what we do is take pictures at weddings. But we learned from how stressful our own wedding was that the process of getting married can really steal the joy of your wedding. So we’ve focused on helping our couples to experience and enjoy their wedding. We help create custom timelines for our couples to help them prioritize their day.
Paige is the ultimate hype-man for a bride and her bridal party. Brides tell us all the time they wish Paige could just follow them around all day getting them pumped up. All of our photography is meant to enhance the experience. We never ask couples to just get into a pose and smile. We always have them interact, tell each other stories, play games, or ask one another questions. We work very hard to make sure that photography isn’t just a thing forced into your wedding celebration, but is actually a PART of the celebration.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We were both really lucky to have parents who supported whatever we wanted to do. Wil’s parents let him major in philosophy, after all! So we’ve always felt like we could take risks and do things we enjoyed. Even if money was tight or the business seemed slow, we never felt like we had to “grow up and get a real job” because of the lack of pressure from our families.
About five years ago we moved to Houston for Wil to take a job that seemed like a done deal and then it turned out it wasn’t. That was a major stroke of bad luck in our life. But it turned out to be great luck, because that was when he dedicated all of his time to our business. And now we’re better of in so many ways working for ourselves and designing our life the way we want it. It really felt like the end of the world at the time, but it has been such a great thing for us.
Pricing:
- Wedding collections begin at 2500
- Our most popular collection is 4400
Contact Info:
- Website: theramseysphotography.com
- Phone: 2814145488
- Email: hello@theramseysphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theramseysphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theramseysphotography/
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/theramseysphoto/
Image Credit:
Personal photo: Gary Blake Photography
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