Working For Your Husband

Although Alfred and I are co-owners in this little thing called our photography business, in the 6-12 hours of your wedding day, he’s MY boss. For the rest of his existence, I am his. Even trade.

If you’ve ever worked for relatives or loved ones, you know it isn’t always a piece of cake, but it does have its rewards: extra time together, sense of achievement, you have more things to talk about, and you get to enjoy your passion with your loved one. Like any other boss-employee situation, there will be times when you disagree with your boss. In office situations, this would call for a 1:1 meeting or a polite email, or maybe a quick call to HR.

In my case, it involves visions of hitting said boss on the head with a tripod or thinking up imaginative uses for a lighting cord. However, I am getting better at it. You see, unlike typical manager/employee relationships, working for your husband involves an emotional investment and whole lot of swallowing of the thing called pride. For instance, when he looks at a picture I took, tilts his head, and says, “what was your thought process when you took this picture?” I know that in his head he’s thinking, “WTF?” Or, when I suggest that we take a picture from a particular angle and he brushes me off—because he’s the boss and he knows so much more than me—I remind myself that he’s brushing me off because it was a lame idea, and NOT because he doesn’t love me anymore or thinks I should stop wearing SpongeBob pajamas to bed.

Ranting aside, I’ve learned that I need to extract the emotional part of our relationship during weddings. So, for example, when he insists that I leave the 70-200 lens in the car, and I ask him “are you sure?” and he says “yes”, and then 30 minutes later asks me, “do you have the 70-200?” I have to resist the urge to pull my eyeballs out through my nostrils and just go get the darn 70-200 from the car. I can then just put his favorite comic book in the blender when we get home.