Blake & Kaylee’s Sunday Morning Anniversary Session at The Grand America Hotel

Some couples celebrate an anniversary with a nice dinner. Blake and Kaylee decided to recreate their wedding morning instead — pajamas, bathrobes, and a hotel room at Grand America, one year later. No dinner reservation required. Just the two of them, desserts for breakfast and Sunday Comics, and a whole lot of playful connection.

A Full-Circle Kind of Anniversary

Blake and Kaylee got married at The Grand America last year, so when their first anniversary rolled around, going back wasn’t sentimental for sentimentality’s sake — it just made sense. Same hotel, same city, entirely different kind of morning. This wasn’t a wedding day. It was the version of them that exists after the wedding day: unhurried, a little goofy, completely comfortable in each other’s space.

They found me on Instagram with a vision already half-built — a Sunday-morning-in-Paris kind of feeling. Newspapers. Cake in bed. Soft light, cotton pajamas, nothing performative. I took that vision and ran with it, which is exactly the kind of collaboration I live for. A couple who trusts me enough to hand over the concept and let me build the world around it? That’s the good stuff.

The Grand America Effect

If you’ve never shot inside Grand America, here’s the short version: it doesn’t feel like Salt Lake City. It feels like you left the country for a weekend without leaving downtown. The hotel has this rich, historic, almost time-capsule quality — the kind of interior that makes a couple in bathrobes look like they wandered out of a French film instead of just, well, a hotel room. That’s exactly why it was the right call for this shoot. You don’t get “Sunday morning in Europe” energy just anywhere in Utah. You get it here.

Cozy, Not Costume-y

The whole look was built around comfort that photographs like intention: soft white cotton tops, nostalgic blue pajama bottoms, and thick, luxurious bathrobes layered over the top. Nothing about it read as “styled.” It read as lived in — which was the point. The palette stayed soft and muted to match, letting the tones of the room and the morning light do the work instead of anything loud or overly styled.

The Cake Nobody Planned For

Here’s the part I didn’t see coming, and honestly the part that made the whole shoot: while rummaging through the room for a cup, I found leftover cake from the night before, with a perfect bite mark in the side, still sitting there with “Happy Anniversary” written across it. It wasn’t staged. It wasn’t on the shot list. But it was exactly the kind of unplanned, slightly messy, deeply real detail that Sunday mornings are actually made of — so cake in bed stopped being a mood board reference and became the literal centerpiece of the scene.

That’s the thing about a session like this: the best moments aren’t the ones you plan for. They’re the ones you’re paying enough attention to catch.

Building the Story in Real Time

My favorite part of this session wasn’t any single frame — it was watching the story build itself scene by scene, in real time, without a script. I wanted the whole thing to feel light, familiar, a little whimsical — playful in the same way early dates are playful, before either person is trying too hard. So instead of directing poses, I stayed focused on their natural interactions and brought movement into the frame around genuine connection: a quiet moment of enjoying the sun among their faces, a pillow mid-flight, a hug wrapped in a cozy bathrobe.

The best shots weren’t posed. They were noticed.

Why This Kind of Session Matters

An anniversary session isn’t a wedding redo — it’s a chance to document who a couple actually is once the wedding-day performance is over. Blake and Kaylee didn’t need another formal portrait. They needed a morning that felt like them: unbothered, close, still a little giddy about each other a year in.

If you’re local to Salt Lake City and thinking about marking a milestone anniversary with something a little different than a dinner reservation — a Sunday morning session, a Grand America afternoon, or a full-blown vow renewal — I’d love to build that story with you. Get in touch here and let’s talk about what your version of “Sunday morning” looks like.