Wedding - Melissa and Jake

When I first was asked to photograph Melissa and Jake's wedding, I knew this was going to be a fun wedding.  They know Dawn and Brandon, whose wedding I photographed last year, and their (and my) friends Boo and Mason.  If they're friends with this group, I figured, it will be a blast.

It was definitely a chill, laid-back production - the wedding was in the afternoon, the reception was at a fire hall next door to the church.  Downside was it was cold and rainy.  The church was tiny, and there were a ton of people!  Everyone turned out for this wedding; Melissa and Jake have been together for something like 15 years, high school sweethearts, the whole romantic shebang, and you can tell they were thrilled to be finally tying the knot.  I love it!

We did photos inside the church, and then a few quick wedding party formals outside.  We had originally planned on going to a gazebo, but the weather killed those plans.  Definitely still got some wonderful pictures though!

The reception was so much fun.  There were a ton of people, everyone was drinking and dancing and having a great time.  I got all kinds of absolutely hysterical candid shots!

 This one just above is one of my favorites - I love how both Melissa is turned to her maid of honor and Jake is turned to the his best man.  They're married and excited and sharing that excitement with their friends and that's just awesome to me.

Campbell-Brooks - Dawn and Brandon's Wedding

Let us just say that it's taken me nearly a week to write about this wedding because it took me a couple days to recover.  Exhausting, but fun and beautiful, so all was well.  Dawn and Brandon are super cool and very chill about everything, so it was really just that it was long.  I did a lot of running around.  Got to Dawn's mom's house a little after 8am while she was getting her hair done (there were English Muffins for breakfast!!), then at 10 we went to Macy's for her makeup.  Swung by the reception hall after that to drop off my photo booth setup (Alien Bee, softbox, white backdrop and stand) and so she could make sure everything was going well there.  Left there for the drug store where I had earlier dropped off some files of their engagement photos to make 5x7s, went back to my apartment to load the hair/makeup photos onto the iMac and then to the church.  I'm so glad everything was within 5 or 10 minutes of each other.  I got the church before everyone else, so waited around in my car and snacked on some apple-cinnamon granola for a bit.  Then the dressing began.  That was fun, but because we had to wait awhile, I went and took pictures of Brandon and all the guys hanging out before the ones of Dawn and the bridesmaids.  Grabbed a couple quick shots of the lovely ladies posing.  Loooove my fisheye.

These guys are actually the ushers, directly before the ceremony.  Star filter, anyone?  Then the ceremony began.  I ran around a lot, trying to get everything at once.  Next wedding (especially if it's as big as this one - SIXTEEN people in the bridal party) I may hire a second photographer, just to be on the safe side, but I'm confident I got what we need.  I pulled out the fisheye again to get a couple shots of everyone on the alter, because they just wouldn't all fit with 18mm!!  I was down to 11 or 12mm for this shot, and then cropped off a bit of the top and bottom because the extra space really was unnecessary.

After the ceremony - PARTY BUS!  Dawn and Brandon, instead of a limo, went for this sweet bus where everyone could fit and we drove around for awhile before stopping off at the Center baseball fields/park to get some formals.  My favorite is probably a sweet candid of the two of them though, seen below.

Then we went to the reception, where I took way too many pictures of people dancing (it was fun!) and not as many pictures of people in my photo booth as I would have liked.  It was worth bringing it though, because I got a really cute shot of Dawn and Brandon at the booth, and they're the important ones!