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Avery Wooten

@ordinarilyavery

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Former wedding photographer- Orthodox Catechumen family ☦️ Follow along!

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For six years, photography shaped the rhythm of my life.

It introduced me to people I would have never known, placed me in the quiet corners of some of life's most sacred moments, and taught me to notice beauty with greater attention. I have witnessed tears, laughter, reconciliation, celebration, and the ordinary grace that so often goes unseen.

For all of it, I give thanks to God.

As I've begun walking toward the Orthodox Church, I've slowly realized that there are seasons when the Lord asks us not simply to add something new to our lives, but to loosen our grip on something we have loved. Not because it was bad, but because He is inviting us somewhere else.

Leaving photography is not easy. It carries grief, gratitude, and uncertainty all at once. I don't know every reason why this season is ending, but I trust the One who does.

Over these past months, I've come to see that my identity cannot rest in what I create, what I accomplish, or what others know me for. Those things can be beautiful gifts, but they were never meant to become my foundation. My hope is to become more faithful than successful, more attentive than productive, and more concerned with loving God than building something for myself.

To every couple, family, planner, fellow photographer, and friend who entrusted me with your lives—thank you. It has been an honor beyond words to witness your stories.

As I lay this work down, I do so with open hands. Every good thing belonged to God long before it belonged to me. If photography bore any beauty, it was because He allowed me to participate in it for a little while.

Glory to God for these six years and glory to God for whatever comes next. by @ordinarilyavery

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3 months ago

This year continues to be full of successes and failures, all crucial to my growth as a business and person. When you think God isn’t working, He is.

Celebrating one month of our People feature 🥂 taken in Charlotte, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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2 years ago

To the mom who doesn’t quite feel like herself anymore,

I know sometimes it feels like motherhood has taken pieces of you that you’re not sure you’ll ever get back.

Your days that once belonged mostly to you now belong to everyone else. You make the lunches, sit in the school pick-up line, make dinner when you don’t feel like making dinner, clean the kitchen, wash the clothes, and wake up to do it all over again.

But then there are the things no one sees.

The pep talks in the car before they do something scary. Talking through the friendship that hurt their feelings or the disappointment they don’t have words for yet. Teaching them how to understand their emotions while trying to regulate your own.

Sometimes there are plenty of people who could comfort them, but they don’t want anyone else. They want Mom.

Caption continued in comments… taken in Cary, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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2 days ago

I’ve gone from not knowing God, to knowing Him with a worldly lens, to feeling Him more than ever before in 6 months.

Orthodoxy has been the stripping away of so much of what I thought Christianity was supposed to be. A stripping away of myself.

Less of the world, less of people’s interpretation, less of trying to make God fit into what makes sense or feels comfortable to us.

Instead, I’ve found something ancient- but so, so beautiful I can hardly put it into words.

A Church that didn’t begin with a modern movement or someone’s new interpretation of Scripture, but traces its life back to Christ and His Apostles, preserving the worship, sacraments, prayers, and faith handed down through generations.

There is something incredibly humbling about walking into church and realizing none of this was created for me.

The icons, the incense, the prayers, the fasting, the liturgy — they aren’t meant to bend around my preferences. They invite me to be changed instead.

And somehow, in surrendering my need to understand God through the lens of the world, I have come to know Him more deeply than I ever have before.

This morning, I found myself praying for so many friends. Some who know God, some who are searching, some who may not be thinking about Him at all. Some who may be bending God to make what they want fit, instead of the other way around.

May we all keep seeking Truth, even when it asks us to change. ☦️ taken in Raleigh, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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8 days ago

In my PTO era 🦞

#stayathomemomlife #sahm #ptomom #momlife taken in Apex, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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16 days ago

I’m not sure how I ever thought anything else was more important.

#momswhoquittheirjobs #stayathomemoms #orthodoxmom #quityourjob taken in Apex, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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a month ago

Coming home after a wedding weekend as a mom is such a weird feeling.

Because I genuinely loved what I was doing. I loved the weddings, I loved photographing people, I loved being in the middle of all of it. There were so many weekends I would come home thinking, that was SO good.

But then Monday came…

And suddenly I was unpacking camera bags while staring at three loads of laundry, realizing we had no groceries, trying to figure out what everyone was wearing to school, answering emails I ignored all weekend, cleaning up the house, looking at the calendar for the week and wondering how I was already behind when the week had barely started.

And physically, I was done.

People don’t always realize that photographing a wedding means being on your feet for 8, 10, sometimes 12 hours. Carrying gear, squatting, running around, barely sitting down, constantly paying attention and thinking ahead. I usually needed a solid two days before I felt like a normal human again.

Except when you’re a mom, you don’t really get two days to recover.

Breakfast still needs to be made. Someone needs help finding their shoes. There’s a school thing you forgot about. Someone needs a snack approximately four minutes after you just fed them.

And I think that was one of the strangest parts of working in weddings for me. I could love what I did while I was away and still hate how far behind I felt when I came home.

Those things don’t cancel each other out.

I didn’t secretly hate my job because I was exhausted. I wasn’t ungrateful for the career I built because sometimes I wished I could just stay home.

I loved it.

And it also took a lot out of me.

I think a lot of moms who work jobs they genuinely enjoy probably understand that feeling. Sometimes it isn’t about choosing between a career you hate and being home with your kids.

I spent this past weekend with the best families and was reminded how much of a blessing this job has been. Sometimes you really do love both, and that’s what makes it complicated. by @ordinarilyavery

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18 days ago

“The Summer I Finally Listened”

Not to the pressure to keep growing, not to the voice telling me I’d worked too hard to slow down, not to the fear of what people would think if I walked away from something I had spent years building, but to what my life was actually telling me.

I was burnt out, not in the dramatic, everything-fell-apart kind of way, but in the much more ordinary way I think a lot of working moms experience it, always tired, always thinking about the next thing, physically present but mentally somewhere else, answering an email while making breakfast, thinking about work while playing with my kids, checking my phone when I should have been resting.

Eventually I had to admit that being capable of carrying it all didn’t mean carrying it all was working.

There were important things I was missing, not necessarily the big milestones, but the normal parts of life, slow mornings, being available, taking care of my body, cooking dinner without rushing, going somewhere with my kids without mentally calculating how much work I was getting behind on, having enough margin in my day that one unexpected thing didn’t throw everything off.

For a long time, quitting felt irresponsible because work was income, identity, accomplishment, and something I had built from nothing, but I started looking at it more practically, what was this pace actually costing our family, what was it costing me physically, how much of my mental capacity was constantly occupied by work, and was the money or success worth that trade anymore?

For me, the answer had become no.

Caption continued in the comments. by @ordinarilyavery

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a month ago

How the Wedding Industry Led Me to Orthodoxy-

For years, I worked in an industry built around beauty. Beautiful dresses, flowers, tables, photographs, venues, places. I genuinely loved it, and I still love so much of what I was able to experience because of it. But somewhere along the way, I think I started confusing beautiful things with a beautiful life.

I became obsessed with building something impressive. I wanted the better weddings, the publications, the recognition, the money, the growth. I wanted people to know my name and respect my work. And if I’m being completely transparent, at some point I think I stopped simply owning a business and started worshipping it. My work became so intertwined with my identity that I didn’t really know where one ended and the other began. When business was good, I felt good about myself. When people admired my work, I felt important. Being busy made me feel needed, and making money made me feel secure.

What’s interesting to me now is that I actually got a lot of the things I thought I wanted. I built something valuable. I photographed beautiful weddings, traveled, was published and made money doing something creative that I had built entirely on my own. But when I look back at that season, I don’t know that achieving more was actually making me better. A lot of the time it was making me more anxious, more consumed with comparison and more concerned with whatever was coming next. I was working so hard to build this beautiful life while sometimes being too distracted to actually live the one I already had.

Caption continued in the comments… by @ordinarilyavery

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a month ago

Things that have changed for me since finding the Orthodox Church:

I am calmer.

I am less angry.

I snap at my children less.

I drink less.

I am slower to react and quicker to recognize when my own pride is getting in the way.

I think more about the kind of wife and mother I am becoming, not just everything I need to get done.

I crave quiet more than noise.

I am learning that repentance isn’t shame—it’s continually turning myself back toward God.

I pray differently.

I see suffering differently.

I think about my choices differently.

I feel more grounded. More balanced. More aware of myself.

I am learning to let go of the need to control everything.

I am learning that peace doesn’t come from finally getting my life exactly the way I want it. It comes from surrendering it.

And maybe the biggest one—

I feel like I found God all over again. Not a new God, not a different God. The God I have known, but somehow, through the Orthodox Church, I am encountering Him with a depth and reverence I didn’t know I was missing.

There is still so much I don’t know. So much I’m learning. So much in me that still needs to change.

But I can look at the woman, wife, and mother I was before walking through those doors and the one I am becoming now, and I know something is different.

I came looking for a church, but I think what I found was a way home.

#orthodoxy☦️ #orthodox #orthodoxchristian #orthodoxchristianity taken in Raleigh, North Carolina by @ordinarilyavery

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a month ago

Pretty chic 2 me 🤍 by @ordinarilyavery

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a month ago

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a month ago