How I’m responding to COVID-19 (w/ book recommendations + cat photos)

Here are the following steps I am taking regarding concerns for COVID-19 and how I will be operating my business for the foreseeable future of 2020.

It’s a very STRANGE time. I think we can all agree on that. Think about it! When we are old and have grandchildren and they’re learning about the 2020 pandemic in school, we can talk about what we did during this grave time! Like, how many pairs of sweats we’ve gone through, what new dinner dishes we’ve concocted, how toilet paper was a luxury and all the schools closed for the rest of the year. For me? I have perfected a batch of rice for the first time.  I plan on telling my grandchildren that it’s when I came up with my original super secret recipe for rice. However, I’ve only perfected it one time (I’m working on it).

Here’s the thing. My daily life has not been RADICALLY changed like some people. I work from home already, I wake up when I want to, and work when I want to. My daily life in quarantine has been looking a lot like this.

Here is how COVID-19 has affected me:

• I’m doing quite a bit of damage control when it comes to weddings and making sure I can still be a part of every couple’s special day if they unfortunately decide to postpone. If you are considering postponing, and we haven’t chatted, PLEASE email asap with any concerns. 

• I have had to reschedule all engagement and family sessions within the month of March, April and half of May. 

• I’ve missed out on the unique windows when newborns should be photographed. 

•  I have NOTHING in my editing queue. Which is SO weird. I haven’t opened up my editing software in weeks. 

• I have done all consultations through Zoom instead of in person at my favorite coffee shops. Which I have missed because I love meeting new people for the first time in person.

Here’s some good news though

• So far, I will still be a part of every single one of my couple’s postponed wedding days. 

• I’ve booked a few 2021 weddings already during this time! Which makes things feel a little bit more normal and I still have money coming in.

• Everyone has been so kind, flexible and understanding. I have felt so much love during this time from my couples and I can’t thank you all enough for it. 

So what are my plans for future sessions and weddings?

I’ve learned a lot about how to operate a non-essential business during this time. I’ve had to come up with plans and solutions to answer all the what-ifs for weddings coming up this year. Since the Kansas City lock-down is supposed to end May 15th, a lot of my scheduled sessions for the spring will be happening at the end of May with the possibility of weddings starting up at the end of June. I’m optimistic but also taking this very seriously since I’m worker who is surrounded by large groups of people usually once a week. Luckily, my future weddings are pretty spread out until August. So, if you have a session with me in the near future, or you have a wedding coming up, here is what I plan on doing to protect myself, you and your loved ones.

• Update: June 11th:

  If your engagement session is outdoors I will ask if you prefer if I wear a mask or not. If your session is indoors or at a bar, store, or restaurant, I will wear a mask. If it’s a maternity, family, or newborn session I will wear a mask no matter what.

• For weddings: I will be wearing a mask the entire time.

• Feel free to express to me if you want me to wear a mask regardless of the above scenarios especially if you are immune-compromised or have family who are. I will happily oblige if that makes you more comfortable. I purchased my mask from a local business: SewKc!

• I will be practicing social distancing throughout the session and wedding when possible. If we are doing a session in your home, that’s when the mask comes in, because I doubt we’ll be able to keep 6 feet apart. I am always so excited to photograph my clients and I love hugging people in greeting, showing photos as we go, and maybe even touching you to help you into a pose. I won’t be doing this and I ask that you respectfully do the same.

• Please keep any personal items that you won’t need during the session in your car. I am always so happy to carry your purse or phone during a session, but to minimize any touch, please keep them in your car. When it comes to your keys, take off any keychains to just the singular key and keep it in your pocket.

• I ask that, as a respect for my business and myself, to please communicate to me if you at all think you have been subjected to COVID-19 at any capacity. I obviously expect you to tell me if you are experiencing symptoms, but I’m talking about a close friend/relative/co-worker you have seen in the past week suddenly has COVID-19, to let me make the call on whether or not we should proceed with the session. I will also be giving you the same respect. Use your best judgment. <3

• All consults and meetings will be virtual from here on out.

I may be following these steps for the remaining year as a precaution.

I have expressed further steps with couples privately to address any other what-if scenarios like if I were to become sick, or they decide to postone etc. again, if you have any concerns, even if your wedding is at the end of the year, please reach out and I’ll be happy to go into detail about all of it.

What other ways can you support me during this time?

• I’ve set up a print shop full of my travels in the past five years that are from all over the country! You can find that here

• You can write me a review! Google (working on setting that up), Facebook, The Knot

• You can set up a future session with me and pay half now and half later. Contact me!

• Refer me to your newly engaged friends! I appreciate all of your kind words.

Thank you so much taking the time to read this! Please stay safe out there and I am looking forward to having you in front of my camera very soon!

Now, if you do not care about book recommendations, then you can move on with your life, but, if you are desperately trying to find a good book to read? I saw this blog post as a perfect excuse for me to recommend books to you.

So I have a bookstagram (kelseydianebooks). I read a lot. Since being in quarantine I have read 6 graphic novels, and 7 novels. Literally since middle school I have always loved sharing my love of books to people. I also know a lot about books I haven’t even read yet because I watch people on Youtube give book reviews and recommendations.

I want to suggest looking into Book the Month. You can pick a book each month starting at $15. They have five books to choose from, and if you want to add an additional book it’s just an additional $10 which is SO cheap for a hardback book. 

And if you don’t have the app Libby downloaded to your phone yet, you should. You can borrow audio and ebooks through the app that connects to your local library. It’s a great way to get books from your library. I also love borrowing the ebook form so then I can read on my kindle at night without a lamp.

Ok, now onto the books.

I’m just going to suggest the books I’ve read this year and last year because all my thoughts of them are fresh in my mind. I hope I can supply a little bit for everyone so they have at least one book to dive into. I’m only going to share a very small tidbit of info on each book to try to hook you in. Hopefully you’ll find at least one book to try!

Young Adult books:

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir is a four book fantasy series that will be finished up by the end of the year. It transitions between two character perspectives. One being a girl whose essentially a slave to the empire, and the other is a boy being trained to become on the deadliest killers for the empire against his wishes. I flew through the first book and it becomes quite a bit more detailed as the books go on.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson: this is an addicting thriller mystery book that you can just fly through. You do have to forgive it at times with how realistic it is. But it’s a fun book that follows a girl writing her thesis paper on a local murder case. It’s also a series, but you don’t have to read the others to get this one’s full story.

Illumine by Ami Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: this is a trilogy series that is so dope. It follows two characters as they escape their planet on two different spaceships from another space ship that wants to destroy them. Oh also, they just broke up the day that their planet got attacked. The entire series is almost like a graphic novel because it’s made up entirely of articles, sound bites, video camera footage, and it’s designed to look ultra cool. It’s SUPER fast paced and I call it sci-fi lite because it doesn’t take a whole lot to picture everything happening since it provides so much imagery for you in its design.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman: a dystopian trilogy that follows two main characters as they are being trained to become “scythes”. Basically the world has figured out how it can live forever, but to maintain population, they have trained “scythes” to handle it. The writing in this book is SO good and the characters are marvelous.

Six of Crows by Leigh Burdugo: a fantasy dulolgy that follows six characters as they try to perform a heist for some big money. I literally named my cat after a character in this book: Kaz. I LOVE this series and the characters are what makes this book so good. It does take a little bit of effort to get into it, but after the first 100 pages you start to catch up.

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson is one of the best young adult sci-fi books I have ever read. Brandon Sanderson is known for his adult high fantasy books, and I was surprised he started to write a young adult sci-fi but I am telling you, this book is so dang GOOD. I thought I wasn’t a sci-fi person, but this book proved me wrong. It’s about a girl, living on a planet, that has always been constantly attacked by aliens, and she is training to become a pilot to best these aliens and make her home a safer place, just like her dad. Her dad died in combat when she was young under very curious circumstances.

Thrillers

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager: is a thriller that revolves a woman who is desperately trying to find ways to make money and comes across an ad that is paying people to live in an apartment for a few months as an “apartment caretaker” with a very odd set of rules that must be followed to make the amount of money they are offering. Then one of her apartment caretaker friends suddenly disappears.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware is a thriller about woman taking a nanny job that is paying an astronomical amount of money to take care of this family’s kids. She gets to live in the home as well. Upon arrival, she learns that the past nannies that were hired keep quitting only after a couple of months or weeks due to their claims that the house is haunted. The house is part victorian and part “smart home”, which makes for a really creepy atmosphere.

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing is very addicting. It’s about a married couple that has decided to spice up their life by planning and committing murders together. Yup, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The One by John Marrs has plans on becoming a tv show! It follows multiple characters in a world where you can submit your DNA to find your “soul mate” and each character’s soul mate are vastly different than what they pictured. One example is a newly engaged man being matched with another man instead of his future wife.

All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth is a slow burn following a girl trying to get into an exclusive club in her pretentious high school called “the A’s” who asks her to do tasks in order to obtain membership. She is also haunted by the fact that her mother mysteriously disappeared when she was a child. These two storylines converge. This book is long, and slow and if you’re not into slow burns, then this may not be for you, however I really enjoyed the writing and characters.

Other Adult Books

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a fictional contemporary book with quite beautiful prose. It follows two characters that fall in a “forbidden” love starting in high school. It’s a coming of age story that follows the two characters as they weave in and out of their lives as the years go by. It’s a bit dark but it’s pretty short and is a tv show on Hulu! Also Obama suggested it.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is one of my favorite books of all time and is also on Hulu as a tv show. It’s about two family dynamics and mostly focuses on the mother’s of both of these families that lead very different lives from each other. Their lives start to become interwoven when their children befriend each other. Then a trial regarding the adoption of a Chinese-American baby girl divides the town and the mothers. This is one of the best character driven stories I’ve ever read. I absolutely loved it and it really dives into what it means to be a mom.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of the most addicting stories I’ve ever read. It follows Evelyn Hugo, a famous celebrity in the 60s that is about to pass away, when she asks a random journalist to write her biography that involves diving deeper into her marriages of her seven husbands.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a hardcore sci-fi book that revolves around a phenomenon that is dubbed False Memory Syndrome, that causes people to have memories of lives that they had never lived. It follows two different character perspectives. One is a cop that is investigating this phenomenon and another is a scientist that is trying to create a machine that will perserve life’s most precious moments for people to relive over and over. The writing in this book is stellar and the story is actually crazy.

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson: this a memoir by blogger Jenny Lawson. She talks about her life dealing with multiple mental illnesses that all involve some level of anxiety. This book’s sub title is: “a funny book about horrible things” and I think that entails what it’s all about perfectly.

Everyone’s a Alien when ur a alien too by Jomny Sun: this is the most adorable comic book I’ve read in awhile that has some HARD hitting truths in it but also delivers it in a cute light hearted way. You can read it in one sitting and it’s wonderful. You POSSIBLY could read it to your kids too.

Please let me know if you decide to pick up one of these books. I’d love to discuss it with you! And again if you have any questions or concerns involve COVID-19, please contact me!