I have to admit that I had the hardest time getting through this post without holding back all the tears. How has a year gone by already?! I’ve kept a human alive for that long and he’s a healthy, happy boy (yay us)! Well, you know what comes with first birthdays…a huge party with everyone under the sun aka like your wedding but now your friends have kids too! Of course first birthdays are super special and we wanted to celebrate it with Miles and his family and friends but we also wanted it to be something we’d remember. You know how I’ve said that it takes a village well it’s because it’s TRUE guys. I can attest to the fact that we had so much help this first year especially with me still working on the blog and Roy with his full-time job and side biz. We wanted our parents to feel extra special because growing up, they were so busy working all the time. With Miles, they’re able to spend more time with their grandson and help us out when we need it the most. So Roy and I decided that we would have a small family photoshoot in lieu of a big party to capture Miles’ first birthday. Whitney Heard has been part of our journey and of course she continued that tradition by capturing Miles’ first birthday photos!
In Korea, first birthdays are huge parties called ‘doljanchi‘. You celebrate the big milestone by blessing the child with good health and prosperity. You generally uphold traditions of dressing your little one up in traditional clothing (‘dol bok’) and have a ‘doljabi’. Doljabi is a tradition where the baby is placed in front of various objects and is encouraged to grab one or two items. Each item represents a specific lifestyle or career and whatever items are chosen are supposed to be indicators of the child’s future. Of course, this is done in fun and everyone always enjoys seeing what the baby chooses.
For the ‘doljabi’, we decided to have the traditional items such as a book for scholar, yarn for long life, money for prosperity, and we added an item each to represent us. For myself, we added a camera for my love of photography, and for Roy we added a small leather tool since he makes leather goods! We laid out all the items in front of him and encouraged him to chose something. Guess what he chose…
And the second and third items were yarn and money! Honestly, all the options are always good so it really doesn’t matter what they choose but it’s always fun to see what they end up picking.
I myself wore a hanbok (korean traditional outfit) for this shoot because generally moms will wear one as well at dols and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I had one for my wedding but I never had the chance to wear it so this was extra special for me.
I shared on my stories, Miles wearing some gold jewelry in the shoot. I learned from my mother-in-law that generally gold rings, bracelets and other jewelry were gifted to the baby for their first birthday rather than cash. Long ago, cash would be used very quickly, but gold jewelry was only sold and the cash used when people were in desperate and dire situations. For this reason, gold jewelry was often gifted to little ones!
We did end up hosting a lunch with our immediate family to celebrate Miles’ first birthday, but I’m so glad we had the private photoshoot session with Whitney days before. Although we were going through a few outfit changes at the shoot, and trying to fit in all that we could, Whitney was able to help us enjoy our cultural traditions. Because of this, we actually were able to enjoy his birthday party and didn’t stress about all the things that had to be done. If you’re looking to throw your babes their first birthday I’d definitely recommend something similar to what we did. Plus our parents loved the printed photos we were able to gift them afterwards!
Photography | Whitney Heard
Makeup | Karen Kim
Hanbok and Dol Bok from Korea
Doljabi items | Toy camera | Yarn | Book
