Pictures: Jordan and Jasmine Get Married (Love in our Lifetime)

Friends, it's the New Year. Let's look at love pictures.

Last week, I was lucky enough to photograph the wedding of Jordan and Jasmine on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in Maryland. Both of them are from New Mexico, so they they'll have a larger celebration soon with all of their friends and family from home, but their sweet friend hired me to capture in photos the day of their legal marriage.

Jordan and Jasmine's love is so palpable and real-- you don't need to know their story to understand the enthusiasm and affection that they put into their relationship.

They were so excited to dedicate themselves to one another, and it seemed like their wedding marked for them a new step in that dedication, but also a natural progression of a love story that's been unfolding since they met, two years to the day before they were married.

Part of me wants to focus only on the love between Jordan and Jasmine, and the everyday miracle of it- two people choosing each other. But there's the other part of the story, too: the fact that when Jordan and Jasmine met two years ago, a marriage like theirs wouldn't have been legal. And now it is.

So as much as it's important to honor their love for what it is-- purely and uniquely theirs--I can't look at this picture of Jasmine, carefully tucking away the fresh marriage certificate that will allow her new wife to access her military benefits, without thinking of all the people I know who fought to make the legality of their union possible.

People who look at pictures like these and say, with hushed reverence, barely believing it, "In my lifetime."

And then, there's the that individuality again-- the pure, goofy uniqueness of their love, Jordan and Jasmine, choosing one another for who they are, not because history demands it.

That's the way love is, I think. Part sweepingly universal, and part specific and particular: those hands, those lips, these brains and hearts, with all the weight of the millennia behind them.

When we see love like that, regardless of what the government has to say about it, or how many times we've seen love before, the appropriate response is to stop and say, with fresh wonder, "In my lifetime".

Jordan and Jasmine, thank you for adoring each other. It brightens the world.

Here's to long and happy years.