An anniversary session: the wedding was the beginning, not the end
One year after the wedding: the same people, the same location, a new story. Why an anniversary session becomes the favourite habit of couples I photograph.
Lazar Mihajlović
Published: 11 September 2026
Last autumn I photographed the same couple for the second time on the same path by the river. The first time they were in a wedding dress and a suit, with two hundred guests behind them. The second time in sweaters, with a thermos of coffee and a dog that would not stay still for a moment. They say the photographs from that second walk are just as dear to them.
An anniversary session is my favourite continuation of the story. The wedding was one day, and the marriage is all the other days. It is only fair that they get a few frames as well.
An anniversary here usually comes down to dinner and a present. An hour in front of the lens is a present that stays once the cake has been eaten.
The same location, a new frame
The loveliest version is to go back to where the wedding portraits were made. The same path, the same tree, the same view, with the two of you a year older and more relaxed. When those two photographs are placed side by side, a family time machine begins that gains a new chapter every year.
If the wedding location is not practical, we choose a place that means something to you. Where you met, where you got engaged, or simply where you like to walk on Sunday after lunch.
That return is special for me too. I know where the light fell a year ago and which frame was your favourite back then, so I build the new walk as a continuation of the same album and not as a new acquaintance. And when a couple comes back for a third or fourth time, we hardly arrange anything anymore, we only pick a date.
More relaxed than the wedding
On the wedding day there is a timeline, two hundred guests and shoes that pinch. At an anniversary session there is none of that. An hour of walking and talking, without an audience and without hurry. Couples who were stiff in front of the camera at their wedding relax here within five minutes, because there is nobody watching them.
That is why these sessions often turn out more honest than the wedding itself. Nobody is playing the bride and groom. The two of you are simply yourselves and that shows in the photographs immediately.
Couples often mention one more small thing: at the wedding they did not even get to be together. The day passes in congratulations and car rides, so an hour for the anniversary becomes the first chance for someone to photograph only the two of them, without any protocol.
A tradition that grows with the family
The first anniversary is a walk for two. A few years later, someone small is already running ahead of you on the same path. Couples who start with anniversary sessions turn them over time into a family tradition, and year by year a family chronicle appears.
I photograph a wedding once. A marriage, if you let me, every year.
Children have to do nothing at these sessions. We let them play, and the most honest frames happen all by themselves.
Imagine a series of photographs from the same path, taken ten years in a row. In the first two frames it is the two of you, in the third there is a pram, in the seventh a bicycle with training wheels. No single album can tell that much.
What it looks like in practice
A session lasts about an hour, most often before sunset when the light is at its softest. You come in whatever you feel comfortable in, we walk, we talk, and I do my job along the way. It all works much like a pre-wedding session, only without the nerves before the big day.
The editing follows the same brand your wedding album was made in, so that memories across the years look like one whole.
I like dates in spring and early autumn best, when the golden hour falls at a reasonable time and nature works for us. Pets are welcome. Their pushing into the frame has not spoiled a single session so far, rather the opposite.
Lazar Mihajlović Photography
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